


Negotiations

by tevinterimperium



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, Canon Dialogue, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Implied Relationships, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Pre-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2018-11-06 01:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11026191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tevinterimperium/pseuds/tevinterimperium
Summary: The Kuragins are surrounded by scandal. Hélène has a solution. Dolokhov can only oblige.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is a messy combination of what I've read of/about War and Peace and actual songs that happen in Great Comet, placed more definitely in their time period and in (my understanding of) social norms.
> 
> ignore any questionable choices i've made re: anything, i've chosen to root Dolokhov more in his Great Comet counterpart and make him a bit softer. they're all a little bit softer. i want them to be soft.

Hélène enters Anatole’s study nearing midnight, her head held high. Her clothing is that between underthings and outerwear reserved for the public; either way, she has no modesty and the divide is irrelevant. Her white gown flows behind her, angelic and young in the moonlight.

She presses the door open with a finger, hears the door creak. She sees the flickering of a candle bathing the rugs and wood of the room and continues forward.

She did not expect or desire her brother to be in the study: instead, she finds Dolokhov, hunched over papers.

“Working still?” she asks, voice honey despite the hour. Her face glows in the orange light. Hélène approaches easily, looking from the tall walls of Anatole’s study to Dolokhov and back again, always something to see. She settles with a hip against the desk, inches between her and Fedya.

“Yes,” he replies, setting his pen atop the papers. He does not care to tell her about what he’s been working on; it’s private business between him and Anatole. In that, he means to say that it’s an outing that he and Anatole are planning for next week. Funds and such must be sorted out beforehand.

Fedya, of course, is nothing if not prepared.

Hélène gives nothing in response, which implies Dolokhov has missed something; he raises his eyes to glance at her. The edge of her mouth is curled into a smile, expectant and waiting. She is beautiful. Enchanting even more so.

Fedya clears his throat and does not drop her gaze, even though the air feels heavy between them, knows not to back down. “And why are you awake still, Countess?”

She, contented, crosses one leg over the other and plants her hands on either side of her, ignoring the papers underneath. “I’ve been thinking,” says she, looking deeply at Dolokhov. The way she utters it implies there is something more, yet she stops.

This is Hélène: nothing if not a tease.

“About what?” Fedya offers, sighing slightly, a hint of annoyance at this game that they have been playing. He always feels as though he is playing a game with the Kuragins, something of strategy, them against each other or them against the world or some combination of the two. Hélène’s grin is a certain tactic while Anatole’s conversation is another. They are both intoxicating and impossible, Fedya thinks, seated in their house in Anatole’s study next to Hélène.

Hélène rises, ensures her skirts create a passing breeze. “You must know, Fedya, we all rest in a tenuous place within society,” she says, fingers dragging against the velvets, the dark wood, the furs on the walls, “Anatole and I, but also _you_.”

Dolokhov knows this. The two of them for their affairs, their entanglements with debauchery, perhaps their entanglements with each other: Dolokhov has never asked, as though it would be stepping over the line between him and the siblings. Fedya himself, of course, for his battles, and the uniting aspect must be the primality of the three of them, the whispers that follow their every step.

Hélène, the queen of society, pretty and posing with a hand on her hip, does not pause for contemplations. She says, “We are all followed by scandals, but I’m to believe that there are ways to quiet down certain rumors.”

Fedya himself has never entangled with the intricacies of this business. Hélène knows the complexities of human connection much better than he does, and thus he (and Anatole, for that matter, still innocent and naïve in his own personal beauty) puts the matters into her hands.

He nods.

“What are you suggesting?” Fedya leans back in the grand chair and watches the ever-bewitching Hélène create a scene. Occasionally it feels unreal. Occasionally _all_ of it feels unreal.

She realizes that he is watching this as he would watch an opera, causing her to bask in the attention and candlelight. She grins. “The technique for getting rid of certain… _unseemly_ rumors is to create others,” she says, voice low and irresistible, Dolokhov would believe anything that comes from her lips like this, “which I believe is necessary.”

Fedya attempts to bite his tongue in inquiry, but his curiosity gets the better of him, and his question comes out as a command for an answer: “And what _unseemly_ rumors are chasing you, Countess?”

Her wicked smile could hide any series of gossips trailing her. “Nothing of note, I assure you,” says she, tight-lipped and enchanting, “the usual speculations.”

Dolokhov knows that those do not normally include whispers of sleeping with one’s sibling; affairs of less scandalous sorts are to be expected. He wonders of the truth in the hearsay of Anatole and Hélène, because while their closeness is peculiar and their touches linger, _he_ certainly has no evidence. Kisses on cheeks may shift into ones on lips and fingers may sneak around waists too often, but Fedya likes to believe that he knows the two of them best. He likes to believe that he would _know._

“And?” he asks.

“And,” she says, “such precautions would involve _you,_ my dear Dolokhov. You and _me._ ”

He looks at her. Her expression conveys nothing but mystery and charm, though it lacks the seductive quality that he might have expected. Hélène doesn’t dare. Instead, the proposition rests between them, Fedya shifting in his seat and Hélène looking at him. She waits. He will not be humiliated by her.

“Meaning what?”

“ _Meaning,_ we make a scene. We draw attention to ourselves.” She runs her hands along the satin of her dress and approaches him, her hips sway. “I’m sure you understand, Fedya.”

He looks at her again. His expression is neutral and vaguely confused in the furrow of his eyebrows and the firm set of his jaw. His hands are gripping tightly onto the arms next to him, though this is in apprehension rather than horror. Again: the game,

He asks, “What would this entail?” with his voice thrown low, feeling suddenly very overwhelmed by Hélène’s mere presence. There is a reason she is known to be intoxicating. The both of them, for that matter, but Dolokhov may have fainted if Anatole were here too.

Hélène clicks her tongue. “It’s all in the physicality, my dear,” she says, “keep your hands on me. Kiss me more than you would. Make the people talk.”

She comes closer, delicately removes one of Fedya’s hands from the arm of the chair, and slides it along her waist. The satin feels otherworldly and the curve of her body causes him to shiver, though he doesn’t have the audacity to remove his hand from hers. She intertwines their fingers and holds him there for a heavy moment, all silent. The moment feels like glass, cold and beautiful and infinite.

Fedya looks up, hardens his gaze, gathers himself. “All right,” he replies, gently tugging his hand away, “if you insist.”

She does. Hélène’s smile is wicked and celestial in its delight, as though she has won the battle. Perhaps she has.

“Thank you, Fedya,” she replies, beautifully, terribly, “It’s all for the best.” 

 

* * *

 

 

The first ball they attend as a newly-minted pair is one hosted by a friend of Hélène whom she detests tremendously, as Hélène finds her gaiety irritating to the point of exasperation. Any personal arguments are pushed aside in favor of dancing, and they arrive together, the fierce Fyodor Dolokhov arm-in-arm with the enchanting Countess Bezukhova. They receive glances instantly.

Hélène leans into his ear and places her free hand onto the bicep of his arm, squeezing. “Fantastic,” she whispers, her lips close enough to be grazing his skin, “we look stunning.”

Fedya does not turn to her but rather watches as Anatole bounds ahead of them. He takes the arm of a young woman, modest and pretty and unknowing to the world, begins a discussion as he does with all of the finest young men and women; eyes bright, smile natural, fingers lingering for a moment too long on the cloth or exposed skin he is offered. Dolokhov still has yet to figure out if all of this is intentional or accidental. Whether his charm is as calculated as his sister’s may be something he never knows.

“Does Anatole know?” he asks, tilting his face an inch closer to hers. She smells of the flowery perfume she rubbed into her wrists and neck just before arriving.

Hélène pats his arm and continues to guide him into the ballroom, flitting her hand with finality. “He doesn’t need to,” she says, obviously. “He’s too wrapped up in his own affairs to care.”

There’s a hint of aggravation in her tone, one that Dolokhov himself knows too well; Anatole is prone to get lost in young, naïve women with fresh faces and forgotten husbands, leaving behind his sister and Dolokhov before returning a week or so later, heartbroken. Hélène hushes the scandal before it begins and Dolokhov consoles him with wine and women of the night before the cycle thus repeats itself once more.

Fedya does not know how Anatole has lasted this long, or how he will continue to last. It is a destructive system that the three of them live in, yet they bear it.

“Yes,” Dolokhov replies, distantly. “Perhaps he is.”

The soirée continues without specific event, passing by Dolokhov as most parties do. He lacks the particular elation that he normally gets from chatting up strangers before getting whisked away; instead, he stays with Hélène on his arm, her charming them and him watching. The hostess raises an eyebrow at them, but has the propriety not to say anything. Dolokhov drinks a reasonable amount, but Hélène knows when to stop him.

As the dance arrives, Fedya dutifully takes Hélène by the waist and hand before tilting his chin directly against her neck. “Do you not think it’s excessive?” he asks, just a hint too quiet for others to hear.

“No,” she replies, “young couples in love are never seen outside of each other’s arms.”

Dolokhov chuckles lightly and drops his gaze lower as though he’s giggling at some secret Hélène has whispered into his ear. “Is that what we are playing ourselves to be? A young couple in love?”

Hélène hums, rerouting their steps as to not crash into others. The pace is light and airy, as it ought to be. After a beat, she says, “Is that amusing?”

Fedya tugs her closer by the waist and feels her body pressed against his. “It doesn’t suit either of us,” he replies, suddenly feeling all of the champagne glasses he drank and disposed of, movements a little sloppy, head a little light.

They both dance in the comfortable quiet, following the rhythm of the band and the flow of the other couples. As they rotate, Dolokhov sees over Hélène’s bare shoulder: Anatole and the young woman, bodies close.

His head is tilted downwards to the girl’s face, muttering something handsome which makes her smile. His hand is snaked around her waist possessively, tugging her so their hips almost brush with each movement. It is enchanting to watch, even as Anatole bends down and presses a kiss, pointedly, perfectly, to the side of her jaw. Her skin blushes pink at the movement, but she doesn’t dare to pull away.

No, no, Dolokhov grounds himself: his own hands, Hélène’s waist, dancing to the music. She smells of flowers. He tastes of champagne. The music crescendos, fills his ears, he buries his face in the crook of Hélène’s neck to avoid looking at the scene Anatole creates with his partner across the room. Anatole kisses her again. Dolokhov’s grip tightening, his breathing heavier, pulling back, pulling in –

He kisses Hélène, full on the mouth, holds her by her divine hips and presses their lips together. She pulls away quickly, knowing not quite the reason for this but the implications behind it; some have noticed, but most have not. Her eyes express worry and confusion.

“Dolokhov,” she says in a breath, a question and a statement all in one. Her hands fall from his shoulders, dragging along the bumps in his coat. Her face is still hardened, knowing that they are in public, knowing that this is _Dolokhov._ He thinks: there is motherliness in her, the guiding in her tone, the strength in her words. She is better than he or Anatole could ever be. She tastes like nothing in particular, but still smells of perfume.

He stops himself. The world shifts faintly and beautiful, terrible Anatole has not noticed what he has done, he still looks into the eyes of the charming young girl as though she is the height of humanity swaying to the music. Dolokhov detests her. He dances once more.

“Fedya,” Hélène whispers again, this time as a comfort rather than a scolding. She brings her hands back to him, physically places him in this moment, here on the dance floor with the Countess Bezukhova, the most bewitching woman in the room, her pearls glittering in the light of a chandelier.

They dance. The night fades. Anatole kisses the girl goodbye, once on the lips and once on the cheek, while Hélène and Dolokhov exit together, arms still intertwined, for his sake rather than hers.

 

* * *

 

 

They meet again in the study of the Bezukhov house.

“What was that?” asks Hélène, still donning her dress from the night behind them, perfectly in place. Her lips are less tinted and her face shines less excellently than it did, but they are resting in a moment of intimacy between the furs and portraits of Anatole’s study.

Dolokhov, seated still, pushes himself upright. “Nothing to worry about,” he replies, lying obviously, his gaze not quite meeting Hélène’s.

She scoffs loudly and crosses her arms. “I expected such a scene out of _Anatole,_ not you,” she announces, “really, Dolokhov, you’re acting no better than him.”

Her annoyance, here, makes him feel rather like a child, rather like _Anatole._ He tightens his jaw at the mention of his name in the first place. He grants her no reply; instead, Fedya stares harshly in Hélène’s direction, as if challenging her. She does not take the bait.

“What?” she continues, placing her hands on her hips in some gesture of scolding. “This surely doesn’t have anything to do with _me._ ”

She is right, and Dolokhov’s expression drops to the floor.

The alcohol has worn off and now Dolokhov feels every movement he makes, every shift of the body, every glance up and back again. His head aches for sleep and solace yet here he sits with Hélène’s eyes boring into him.

“Don’t compare me to your brother,” he mutters, finally. He slouches further.

Hélène pauses, purses her lips. Dolokhov can sense her quiet revelation and refuses to face it. “Is it him?” she asks.

Fedya lets out a breath of air he did not know he was holding. “Isn’t it always him?”

There is truth in it: the two of them are always chasing him around, Prince Vasíli’s arrogant son, spending rubles on women who he won’t remember and drinks to help him forget. There is always some scandal to quiet for him or some woman to save him from, and though Anatole is only a few years their younger he is much less wise, all naïveté masked in handsomeness complete with an assumption of full understanding. Not only that: willing ignorance in affairs that he finds distasteful, or unappealing.

Dolokhov wonders how, or why, he even began to be entangled with Anatole. What confounds him even more is the fact that his devotion surpasses that of acquaintance or friendship and now he sits, here, in his office in Anatole’s house, the boy in question sleeping blissfully in another room with his lips still plump from kissing.

Perhaps it always _is_ Anatole. All roads lead to Rome.

Hélène has an apology on the tip of her tongue, but she was never made for apologies. She teeters, unsure what to do, a master at dealing with the subtleties but never quite good at such frank displays of pure emotion. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, for no obvious reason. Her tone does not quite reach the empathetic stretch that she was hoping for, and thus Fedya continues looking at nothing, the bearskins on the walls, the night peeking out behind a curtain.

“Goodnight, Dolokhov,” Hélène announces, no longer slinking with her coquettish grace; instead, she exits as silently as she can manage.

Dolokhov, painfully, is left alone with his thoughts. He thinks of the golden, wretched son of a wealthy prince, his beautiful sister, and the aching feeling that he is going nowhere and everywhere all at once.

 

* * *

 

 

Operas are a secret pleasure of Dolokhov’s; despite his experience in war and battle, he appreciates the enchanting, if not avant-garde, beauty of the art, especially the ones the Kuragins insist upon attending.

The night begins with their finest gowns, principally Hélène, wearing a dress that barely covers her bosom. She is gorgeous. Anatole has made some excuse for being out; a matter to settle in the city, he will attempt to arrive before the start of the show, and if all else fails, he’ll arrive in the interval.

His delivery in this implied a deeper layer to the reason behind his delay, but Hélène appeared too distracted to ask and Dolokhov did not dare to pry. 

He is announced at the grand doors to the house: “Fedya Dolokhov” followed by “Countess Hélène Bezukhova,” whispers on the people’s lips, their eyes on them. Dolokhov stands as he would anywhere, not frightened by the public or the attention. He presents his arm for the Countess, grins, presses their bodies together.

The routine is of a second nature now. He has gone to two other performances as such with the Countess on his arm, all with Anatole on their outskirts to not make the affair too obvious or scandalous. They receive just the perfect amount of whispers: though it may be peculiar for Hélène to be accompanied only by her brother and his associate (without her husband, the Count), it is not awful enough to warrant a full-fledged disgrace. They exist, perfectly, in the in-between.

Thus, he enters proudly, struts before the gawking audiences, winks at a young woman if he feels so intrigued. He has learned the gentle balancing act of all of this; he is still Fedya Dolokhov the assassin, even acting as Fedya Dolokhov the lover. There is bite behind his smile, as there always is.

Hélène’s body slots into his as well as any woman’s body does, he pressing the palm of his hand into the small of her back and she placing her hand on his cheek; a kiss, then another, a quiet dance in a crowded room.

He whispers, gruffly, into her ear: “Where is your brother?”

She sways heavily in his grasp, leaning into the one arm wrapped around her, Dolokhov’s other properly placed behind his back. “Hm,” she hums, eyes closed blissfully, all part of the act. “Preparing to make a dramatic entrance, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure,” Dolokhov repeats and kisses a line down her neck for the sake of impropriety. Though nights with Anatole include other random women which Dolokhov gets entangled with for the sake of decadence, Hélène is perhaps the closest he has gotten to genuine affection in much longer than Fedya would desire to think about.

As they relocate in their fashion, Hélène catches the eye of a young, beautiful girl dressed attractively in a white gown.

Fedya watches the snare; the girl, not a day over twenty, is caught staring at the pearls along Hélène’s neck, a line of sight which is particularly intriguing to all men who pass her by. Her eyes flick up and thus so do Hélène’s, and there they stand, mere meters away from each other, gazing at one another.

Hélène says, “What a charming young girl,” to Dolokhov at her elbow, though it is not addressed to him, but rather the pretty stranger looking their way – no, _Hélène’s_ way. Her eyes do not leave the woman for a second.

Dolokhov knows when to give her distance. Seductions of a more obscene sort are his times to step away; thus, he leaves her to speak with the hidden Countess Rostova, her godmother, and the kind Rostova cousin, Sonya. A friend of his youth. No – more than a friend, he knows, but he ignores it for the time being, he is a different and better man now than he was then. He is not fool enough to take action.

Anatole, if it were him, if the roles were switched, would.

Instead, he waves to Marya Dmitrievna and withstands her scowl from a few feet away, awaiting the return of his partner. He raises an arm for her to approach and takes her outfitted hand in his. They walk as they dance, elegant and close, but never quite overlapping, nor stepping on each other’s toes.

The curtain rises.

Anatole, still not having arrived, leaves a gaping space on Dolokhov’s left. Anatole must pry money out of his father and sister yet he fails to even appreciate the decadence that he lives in. The scene between himself and Hélène remains on pause, she in a box and he in the stalls. Society has its limits of the acceptable and the scandalous. Dolokhov, alone, watches agape at the performance before him. His eyes never wander from the stage.

This, the charge, the chilling thrill running down his back: this makes the opera a worthy pastime. The scene is nonsensical and yet sensical in every way, each motion foretelling another, the line between this and reality shakes Dolokhov to his very core.

Dolokhov is a man of war. To be granted such pleasures in free time, such decadent and beautiful displays of wealth and society at the hands of Anatole and Hélène, makes every second worth it.

And then: a rush of cold air.

Before Dolokhov even turns around, he knows it is Anatole by the pause with the doors open, bright light streaming behind his silhouette. The figure, Anatole and his handsome stance and his cocked head, waits in the backdrop for a second too long, expecting the turns of eyes and the appalled titters. Dolokhov, foolishly, grants him the pleasure of repositioning himself.

He walks in an indescribable strut that is so purely Anatole that Dolokhov could not begin to capture or mimic it: his sword jangles with each step, his spine is straightened, and his steps are too wide and slow for any man to take seriously. Perhaps Dolokhov only puts up with it because he does not know how to  _not._

As he approaches, his head turns up towards a box located across the room from him, perfectly in Dolokhov’s view. Anatole’s eyes pause there, looking at something, _someone._ His expression is rapturous and enthralled. Dolokhov follows his line of sight.

Oh, no.

The beautiful angel of Hélène, the young Countess Rostova, sits pretty with her hands on her lap and her torso tilted towards the stage. Then, Anatole’s eyes, boring into her, she turns and looks at him, and Dolokhov knows she blushes from yards away. She does not drop her glance with Anatole, doesn’t seem to dare.

Dolokhov knows: the Kuragins are good at sharing, they must be, he has seen too many young woman exit either one of their rooms yet he’s never able to decipher whose she came from. He doesn’t think this can end well. He watches his Anatole anyway, watches the way he stares, watches him saunter down the aisle until he reaches the front, expression neutral. His handsome lips mutter, “Mais charmante,” to no one in particular.

Anatole sits, adjusts the sword hanging at his side, and leans into Dolokhov’s space. Anatole’s arm, thrown behind his seat, lights phantom pressure all along his spine. He instinctively moves forward, though the motion is lost on Anatole.

“Who is that?” Anatole whispers, sounding not unlike a child, jutting his chin inconspicuously towards the Rostovs’ box. His face is very close to Dolokhov’s, though he promptly turns away to glance up again at where the young woman sits, shrinking into herself. Dolokhov must admit, even from here, she is rather striking.

“Rostova,” he replies in a low, hushed voice, throat raw from his silence. “Natalya Rostova, Hélène seems to know her,” he says, sparing a look their direction, two adjacent boxes to hold the prettiest Countesses here.

“Enchanting,” Anatole says, though, like Hélène’s statement on Natasha’s beauty, it is not directed at him. They are more similar than they realize, both gaping at the gorgeous young woman as though she is the only beautiful creature they have ever laid eyes on.

As Fedya attempts to refocus on the stage, which is hard to not do with the crescendos of the singers and their wide-open mouths paralleling the enraptured unclosed jaws of the audience, Anatole leans into his space once more. Their knees are pressed together. “Should I speak to her?”

“Now?” Dolokhov scoffs, looking between the audience member on his right, some Englishman who they’ve met once or twice, and the box where Natasha sits.

“ _Later,_ ” Anatole replies, and, suddenly, grabbing the back of Dolokhov’s neck and bringing their faces far too close together, “I need you to get me to speak to her.”

Dolokhov pretends he is not as affected by this as he is. He can see the gentle curve of Anatole’s lips, the determination in his brow, the darkness coating his features but only softening them. “What am I supposed to say?” he replies in the same hushed tone, attempting to ignore the force which Anatole exerts on his nape, the shiver it sends down his body, the warm feeling of their breaths intermingling in the cold space between them.

“Dolokhov,” he whispers, brutally, harshly, quite unlike him, “ _Fedya._ She’s enrapturing.”

Dolokhov does not particularly disagree, but there is never this primal drive in Anatole with young women, never like this. This is dangerous, he knows it, but they are always treading into dangerous territory, him and the Kuragins. Scandals nipping at their ankles as they strut through halls, houses, the streets of Moscow themselves.

He looks Anatole up and down, the heaving of his chest up to the purely focused twinkle in his eye. “Speak to her,” he replies, simply. “In the entr’acte.”

Oh, Hélène would either hate or love him for this; if it could warrant either reaction, he has done the right thing.

Anatole lets out a breath, then, fleetingly, turns back around to steal a look at her. “Are you sure?”

Dolokhov thinks, momentarily, that perhaps he should be persuading Prince Anatole to turn _away_ from the young woman, whose engagement to the Bolkonsky son was an affair that he, and most others, knew vaguely of. “She’s engaged,” he says, since it is the truth, but he hopes that it won’t come to that. Anatole dances with dozens of pretty women who he never gets that close to, but he also never looks at them as he looks at Natasha now.

“Yes,” Anatole says, turning back to her, not exactly hearing what Dolokhov has just said. Then, rotating once more, pressing his leg against Dolokhov’s without realizing, “To whom?”

“The Young Bolkonsky,” he replies, hushing his voice back down to a whisper. “He’s fighting, stationed somewhere far, I’m sure.”

“Hm?” Anatole hums, though he does not particularly care about Natalya Rostova’s current fiancé, nor whatever he has been doing with his life; Anatole’s attitude is that if he is not here now, he is not relevant.

Dolokhov raises an eyebrow but does not reply. Anatole is not completely present either way, though not a single ounce of his attention has been turned to the opera; he cranes to see the Rostova girl again as if they are playing cat and mouse across the audience. She turns and notices him noticing her before snapping her attention back towards the scene on the stage.

Dolokhov, ever caught by his prince’s liaisons, watches Anatole watching her.

There, if Anatole turns his head just so to look up at the Countess, the light of the stage shines upon the sharp lines of his jaw, his innocent face bathed in yellow-orange, eyes wide in wonder and awe at the beauty. There are the moments when Anatole is more exquisite than the opera, than the entire world itself.

Dolokhov sees fault in Anatole’s obvious displays, almost entirely turned around with his arm thrown behind Dolokhov’s chair to stare at the Countess Rostova, though he knows that he cannot stop him. He attempts to watch the opera unfold, the peculiar actors moving so delicately and perfectly, voices thrown around the room. Enraptured, again.

He keeps his peripherals on the prince, who does not move an inch from Natalya. Anatole watches her as though she is the performance they came here to see.

As the curtain falls, magnificently, and the cheers and applause begin to rise, Anatole takes his stand too quickly and taps Dolokhov on the shoulder, leaning into his ear, “I’m going to speak to Natasha,” he says, somehow both devoted and dazed at once.

“Anatole,” Fedya says, quickly and stupidly, grabbing onto the boy’s hand just before he moves away. “Be careful with that one.”

Anatole grins, beautifully, countenance half-lit by the increasing lights of the stage. “As careful as I always am,” he replies and disappears in the flap of his coat. 

 

* * *

 

 

Anatole returns to him, as he always does, at the end of the opera. Though Dolokhov entered here with the Countess on his arm, he leaves with Anatole right beside him.

“Dolokhov, really, she’s ––,” Anatole begins, though he seems overwhelmed by his own words and trips over them. He simply sighs, as if to express any series of adjectives to fill in what Natasha is. She is nothing, she is everything, she is the sun in the sky and the moon amongst the stars. Dolokhov knows the feeling.

“What did you say to her?”

Anatole hums, his mind stuck in an hour and a half ago, kissing the hand of Rostova, gaze never leaving her eyes, her face, her perfect neck made for posing for portraits.

(Dolokhov himself remained with the men of the stalls, talked up a few warriors like him, something the Kuragins could and would never comprehend to the same degree. Society tastes like wine, war tastes like blood, yet it all looks the same on the fresh white snow.)

Anatole eventually replies, smile spreading wide on his handsome face, as if he was completely unable to stop it and Natasha’s effect on him, “Oh, we talked of most ordinary things,” he says airily as they walk out through the opera doors, “and yet I feel closer to her than I have to anyone before.”

It is now Dolokhov who hums. He has heard this spiel before, perhaps with less zeal, but with a similar cast of characters and a similar outcome.

“We spoke of Moscow and the world,” he continues as they pause underneath the overhang before stepping into the night, “She is enchanting. A goddess. She is the most charming woman I have ever seen, and ever will see.”

Though he is speaking of nothing right here, he stops himself when he turns around and sees, standing in the light of the crescent moon, the same woman he has been writing thoughtless poetry of in his mind.

“Natalya!” he calls, foolishly, quickly striding over to where she, an angel silhouetted in the opera house behind her, looks surprised. The godmother and cousin (Sonya, Sonya, a girl who Dolokhov used to know, he thinks of what _Anatole_ would do, what _Anatole_ could do ––) stand back, sharing a look _._

Natasha and Anatole walk again up to the curb, at which point Anatole uses the hand not grasping Natasha’s arm to wave over the nearest troika. He does so elegantly and as though he is quite in control of this situation, to which Natasha giggles and blushes at his display, positively captivated in Anatole’s every move.

Dolokhov awaits Hélène, though she must be remaining in the warmth as long as she can, chatting to all who look up to her before her time to leave arrives. He shifts, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets, and attempts to avoid watching Anatole, though this is always a fruitless endeavor.

He speaks briefly to the troika driver in elegant French though the driver fails to appreciate the gesture, knows he’s simply peacocking. Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya Rostova enter first, unassisted, though as Natasha moves to go, Anatole takes her hand in his and guides her up.

“It’s been lovely to meet you once again, Countess,” Anatole says, voice low, just for the two of them. “I do hope to see you soon.”

Natasha, young and innocent, smiles widely back at the prince. “And I you,” she replies, hand bent at the wrist, already perched within the sleigh.

Anatole looks up at her as he ought to look up to God Himself, full of awe and incredulity at even being the pleasure to glance upon her. “Goodnight, Natasha,” he says, bringing her hand to his lips and pressing a tender kiss there, and then another an inch closer to her wrist. At once, he moves away, takes a step back, and nods. Natasha does the same, and the troika heads off.

The Prince returns, sighing, elsewhere again. “Beautiful,” he says.

“Beautiful,” Dolokhov repeats but isn’t sure why. They ride in the troika home silently and Dolokhov remains once the Kuragins are left at the Bezukhov residence, thinking of Anatole’s newfound love for Natasha and the one he has fabricated for Hélène. Perhaps there is honesty in his dishonesty, he wonders, the cold winter night rushing past him in a blur, or perhaps for him, it’s even worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, The Duel gets its own chapter. dialogue follows the exact dialogue of the show, be warned. sorry for the wait, i wanted to get a good chunk done on the third chapter before i posted the second!
> 
> chapter's a little messy because Dolokhov's drunk. dw about it.

Anatole has invited along the awkward Pierre Bezukhov, Hélène’s disgustingly wealthy husband through his dead father, to their drinking outing on a fine weekday afternoon. He will undoubtedly pay for anyone and everyone’s drinks once he warms up, knowing of Pierre’s full heart and easy kindness once intoxicated enough. Dolokhov takes the addition in stride.

There is an itching feeling that his supposed affair with Hélène creates a peculiar tension between him and the Count, though Dolokhov cannot tell if Pierre is too much of a hermit to even know of it.

Even as it is, he exists in a fragile place with the bewildered Pierre, as he spends most evenings with his guest (Anatole, who is unwillingly being put up at the Bezukhov household, though Pierre seems to have forgotten about the nuisance that he is) and wife, though he may assume that all of Dolokhov’s attention is focused on the overwhelming Anatole himself, which is not an _unfair_ assumption.

He wonders, momentarily, if Pierre too thinks oddly of the Kuragin siblings, their lingering kisses, their shared women dancing in between them. Or, perhaps Pierre is too self-involved to even notice.

Dolokhov drinks instead of worrying. The vodka is divine.

“Fedya,” Anatole says over the club music and buzz, throwing an arm around his shoulder. They both sit, casually, around a table littered with empty bottles and glasses. Pierre sits opposite, gauging himself on a meal he ordered, never one for patience; with the money he’s inherited, it makes a strange sort of sense. “This is wonderful.”

Leaning back into Anatole’s ear to be heard properly, he replies, “What women we have here tonight, eh?”

Anatole’s smile drops and his expression is rather one stuck in a daydream. “Ah yes, but Natasha,” he says, his lips contorting into a solemn pursed line, “She is more beautiful than all of them combined.”

Dolokhov judges the two drinks that Anatole has already downed and the looseness in his movements, the far-off look in his eye. Natasha occupies his heart and mind at this point in the evening. He lets the music fill his ears and does not feel the need to reply.

As they approach the celestial whir of midnight, the Countess Bezukhov enters in a flair of scandalous cloth and bare skin. A glass is placed in her outstretched hand immediately and she arrives at the territory of her brother and husband and rumored lover.

Anatole greets her first, though she stands on Dolokhov’s side of the table. She leans forward before Fedya’s space and presents her cheek for a kiss. Her brother, smiling in the dim light from the club, obliges, pressing a tender peck to her jawline which he holds for a moment too long.

Fedya has an overwhelming surge of jealousy and annoyance, which he writes off to the amount he’s had to drink and the pounding in his head. Hélène greets her husband and then Dolokhov, though there is more affection in the acknowledgment of Fedya than Pierre. She sits next to him, presses their bodies closer than they ought to be, and continues on.

(Dolokhov is far too wrapped up in his prince’s movements and his own drinking habits to tell Hélène that perhaps flaunting before Pierre may not be the best idea, but even so the craving of intimacy crawls into his brain and chest and he places his hand on her waist, her hand, her thigh as he pours vodka into her glass.)

Eventually they rise to dance, and while Pierre rots himself on wine, Dolokhov sways with the poor man’s wife, scarcely out of an act anymore, knowing that she deserves warmth and care and love just as he does, they are both destined for greater things than getting left behind in the great city of Moscow with Anatole out accompanying some foolish woman and Pierre crumbling in his study, they are both more than this.

“Fedya,” she says into his ear as they twirl once more, her hands placed on his shoulders, fingers scraping at the cotton of his military coat which swings according to his movements, “you’re drunk.”

He presses his forehead against her temple and speaks to her with more intimacy than he should, saying, “Yes, aren’t we all?”

She is right, he is right. He pours more vodka into her empty glass, watches it dribble down the edges and over her fingers. He takes her by the wrist and brings her hand to his lips to take a taste of the excess drink. “Fedya,” she whispers again.

Dolokhov chooses this time to slip away from the prettier Kuragin sibling and set his sights on the more handsome one, where he stands at the edge of the dance with a drink. Anatole looks like a Greek statue posed with his chin jutting out, pensive.

“How is my sister?” Anatole asks despondently, “Lovely as ever?”

Fedya hums and stands beside Anatole to assess the group with him, which allows their eyes to not quite meet. “Very lovely,” he replies, unknowingly pressing his arm carrying the bottle of vodka to Anatole’s, “and you?”

The prince sighs. “It’s all so much, Fedya,” says he, “the people, the dancing, the music.”

“You aren’t really here, are you?” Dolokhov asks rather than offering the consolation that he ought to, he has given far too many of those to Anatole in his day, “You’re elsewhere.”

“I’m with Natasha.”

“Yes, you are. Too much to drink or too little?”

Anatole turns to him, looking wound-up. “Neither.”

Assuredly this informs Dolokhov that the answer to his question is _too little,_ to which he seizes Anatole and brings the bottle up to his mouth. “Drink,” he says, holding both the alcohol and Anatole by the neck and gesturing with a tilt.

Anatole scowls at the childish treatment and pushes Dolokhov back by the chest, but he only persists and tightens his grip on the prince’s nape. “You’ll feel better,” he says, _you’ll forget about her,_ he thinks.

Kuragin looks between Fedya and the bottle, jaw set, before eventually giving up and wrapping his fingers around the bottle, around Dolokhov’s fingers, and raising it to his lips. They move as one, messy and violent. Vodka fills Anatole’s mouth, droplets overflow and spill down his chin and neck, his eyes are closed in bliss. The drink is cold, Anatole is warm.

Anatole’s throat struggles to keep up with his mouth, thus before long, he pulls the drink away from him forcefully, shaking his head. The vodka runs a line down from the corners of his mouth to his Adam’s apple, bobbing, gasping for air.

Dolokhov thinks of licking alcohol off of Hélène’s skin, wonders if it tastes as sacred off of Anatole’s. What he wouldn’t give.

“Don’t ever fall in love,” Anatole says, distantly, after pulling off with a heave, “It consumes you.”

Anatole says this as though Dolokhov has never seen love, never felt it, never had his heart ripped from his chest, still beating, and had it paraded before him. Anatole says this as though Dolokhov were a younger man and a simpler one. Anatole says this as though Anatole is not who he is, the angel, the devil, enchanting and impossible, as though Dolokhov had never met him and they were both living their lives separate from one another, ignoring the gravitational pull, the string that always draws him back to Anatole.

Dolokhov says nothing. There is nothing to say.

 

* * *

 

 

Eventually, the confines of time cease altogether and Fedya replenishes the bottle he’s been gripping onto like a lifeline.

Anatole, four drinks deep, tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling, his feet crossed and settled on the chair opposite him. Dolokhov sits beside him, Hélène on his lap.

“Natasha,” Anatole says, closing his eyes, imagining her and her beauty and the feeling of her body against his, “Her arms, her shoulders, her neck, her feet.”

He describes Natalya Rostova as he would describe a fine wine or a piece of artwork which he has been asked to critique: he catalogs and recounts each aspect of her, the glitter in her eye down to the point of her foot, as though perhaps he might forget her if he doesn’t. He even delves into the abstract, details the smell of her perfume, the taste of her skin beneath his lips.

Hélène raises an eyebrow, a private moment for her and Fedya. Confusion, camaraderie, the mutual affection of Anatole that brings them together time and time again.

Anatole, at once, sits up, expression still dreamy. “I will make love to her.”

“Better not, monsieur,” Dolokhov replies, all too quickly. He digs his fingers into Hélène’s hip to maintain his casual air. “She’s first rate, but nothing but trouble.”

Hélène nods, glances once at Fedya, and taps her fingers on the table. “Better wait till she’s married.”

Dolokhov thinks of Anatole’s wife, forgotten in some countryside with only the scarce money that Anatole’s father sends to her. Dolokhov still does not think of Anatole as a _husband_ in any way, too focused on himself and his dalliances to take the responsibility which the title holds. He’s too young and too old all at once.

Dolokhov leans in closer to Anatole and his mouth jumps ahead of him before he can stop himself, muttering more quietly as to not allow the masses to hear, "An affair between a married man and an unmarried woman never ends well." 

Anatole's concerned countenance shifts into a beautiful, awful smile. He shifts so their heads are facing each other, and he says, in a teasing whisper, "Never mind about that now," before ruffling Dolokhov's hair with a joking ease that only Anatole could summon when discussing his forgotten wife.

He continues, still close and wicked, saying, "It doesn't matter; I don't give a damn. Just as a duck was made to swim in water, God has made me as I am."

The last portion is delivered to Hélène, more used to Anatole's casual ignorance, who smiles just as cruelly and gracefully as he does. Dolokhov cannot help himself from grinning, surrounded by the two enchanting siblings, one on his lap and one at his side, their overwhelming charm sending a spark down his back. He could never deny them, even if he tried.

Hélène and Fedya rise at a certain point, leaving behind the prince to his drinks and women. They dance. He twirls Hélène, presses his body against hers, runs his hands along her skin.

He spots Pierre in the corner, aimless, not even amused by the pretty girl dancing before him with a wicked grin on her face. Women are certainly wasted on him; even if one cannot indulge in their fantasies with ladies of the night, they must at least be _responsive._

Dolokhov watches as if an audience as his beautiful dance partner, the Countess, slinks her way over to Pierre. They have been goading him on all evening, encouraging relentless drink after drink, and Hélène removes herself from Dolokhov’s arms if only to continue to tease him.

She says something to him, grimacing, all teeth and snarl. She is a monster beneath her angelic figure.

Pierre, swaying off-beat to the music, scowls in return, though there is honest innocence in him. He acts as though a child insulted, his eyebrows pulled together, lip protruding in a pout. His stumble only reflects the larger image of his drunken state, which only reflects the larger image of the crowd provoking the Count.

Hélène, uncaring to her husband’s dramatics, announces with an arm raised, “Dolokhov, pour me another!”; she knows he has been observing. She was always attentive for a watchful eye lingering on her, always knows how to use it correctly.

Fedya obliges, though she approaches him in a hurried step with her dressing flowing behind her to send an image of annoyance to Pierre. Dolokhov takes her by the wrist and raises the bottle, fills it to where she wants it and more.

Dolokhov then stumbles over to the corner which dear Count Bezukhov has nestled into, places his hand on his shoulder, and tops off his half-empty glass before raising his drink and saying, “Here’s to the health of married women!”

Yes, perhaps he’s mocking Pyotr Kirilvech, Hélène’s husband, a sad stout man with all of the money in the world and yet no will to live. Even Dolokhov has managed to seduce and land his wife without even trying. The saddest state of man is with a ruined wife, and yet Pierre seems to not even notice.

It’s an injustice, if nothing else. How has a man like Dolokhov built himself from the ground up, charmed the right people, fought his battles to glory, navigated his way through society with the Kuragins at his elbows, and yet Bezukhov may rot himself on his dead father’s money without anyone blinking an eye?

Perhaps a smile lurks at the corner of Dolokhov’s mouth as he drinks next to the foolish Pierre, the man who cannot love; and perhaps Dolokhov knows a thing or two of not being able to love, but Dolokhov has climbed and climbed and climbed his way to where he is today and there is leniency that he is granted in being a man of battlefields and blood.

“Here’s to the health of married women and their lovers!” he shouts, armed raised, grinning. Dolokhov taps the underside of Pierre’s chin, brings his head up, causes him to blink owlishly.

The crowd echoes him in their drunken power, the energy buzzing through them. This is the beauty of the club, the essence that draws him back here again and again; people thrown together becoming more than themselves, more than any individual can be.

“Here’s to the health of married women,” he says, repeats, raises his arms, _and their lovers,_ he thinks of Hélène and himself fabricating a love affair, Hélène and Anatole sharing glances and touches and women, Hélène and Pierre unable to consummate a marriage that neither of them want, neither of them care for.

Dolokhov moves to Hélène in the magnificent flow of the night, holds her close, kisses her neck. It is too dark for him to realize even what he is doing, the crowds echo his toast behind him, Pierre at a table, Pierre left behind again. Everything is heightened and blurred in the oxymoronic wave of midnight, nearing morning.

Then, too slow and too fast all at once, the hulking Pyotr Bezukhov approaches, all heavy movements, half aware of what he is doing, grabbing Fedya by the elbow and pulling him away from the line of Hélène’s jaw.

“How dare you touch her?”

Dolokhov, passionate, primal, fierce, foolish, “You can’t love her!”

“Enough!” Pierre yells, his booming voice drowning out those around them. The music itself seems to stop. He grips Dolokhov by the coat, tugs him by the lapels so they are face to face. “You bully, you _scoundrel,_ I challenge you!”

Fedya is used to these names, but not from the pretty Count Bezukhov, who looks at guns as though they may bite him. “Oh, a duel?” he asks, pulling himself away, shrugging his shoulders casually and powerfully; he feels Hélène grasping at him from behind, but he ignores her. “Yes, this is what I like.”

Hélène snarls and shoves past Dolokhov, speaking to Pierre, “He will _kill_ you, stupid husband.”

“So I shall be killed, what is it to you?” Pierre replies, then, glancing up and looking a few scant feet behind Dolokhov, “Anatole, my guns.”

The prince in question, eyes wide, seems to have been drawn to his sister and closest friend in the commotion with Pierre. His hair is mussed from running his hands through it, an action which he repeats now under the spotlight of the challenger.

Anatole reaches for Dolokhov; he attempts to place a hand on his shoulder in what must be some form of talking sense into him, but Fedya’s blood is running fast in his veins and it’s too late to stop the inevitable now.

“Oh, this is horribly stupid,” Anatole announces, thinking clearly for the first time in his life, arm falling limp at his side.

Anatole being crowned as Pierre’s second is distantly insulting in that it implies Pyotr Bezukhov is closer to the Prince Kuragin than _Dolokhov_ is, which is laughable; Pierre barely wanted to provide his household for Anatole to stay in at Moscow. Dolokhov, on the other hand, has done anything and everything for him, given Anatole energy and affection and time, all of which he will never get back, not now, not ever.

Still. Dolokhov finds Denisov in the crowds and pulls him towards Pierre. “Well, let’s begin,” he growls, bringing himself closer to his challenger, “This is child’s play.”

Dueling is an art form which Dolokhov, as a man of war and society, has become used to, learned to enjoy; it exists in the overlap between primality and social distinction. There are rules even as the rich point pistols at one another as they scramble for their honor.

There is an elation that transcends the battlefield and balls: shooting a gun for the sake of _society,_ rather than Dolokhov’s enjoyment of it, is unexplainable in its satisfaction.

Anatole realizes that this duel is a farce from the moment it begins because Pierre Bezukhov does not know how to hold a pistol while Dolokhov lives with one strapped onto his side as a life source. It is too late to be stopped, but the frantic manner with which Anatole holds himself is warranted; Pierre will face the bark of Moscow’s best warrior, Dolokhov the assassin. If he leaves this alive, it’s a miracle.

They find themselves in a field, Denisov standing between the adversaries, announcing them as he must. The vodka has worn off slightly, and the distant light in the sky grounds Dolokhov in reality: he stands here, facing Pierre, pistol at his side. He was made for this.

A series of partygoers have followed the action as it moves out of the club and into a clearing, climbing into troikas without a second thought. As Denisov counts, they count with him, and thus the battle begins.

Anatole stands like a frightened creature equidistant from the both of them, his hands out as if to placate either Dolokhov or Pierre at any moment. He says, “Pierre, hold your fire.”

It was Anatole himself who had to inform the Count Bezukhov how to hold a gun just minutes before this. The thought is both pitiful and laughable.

Anatole repeats his warning, and if Dolokhov were a weaker man, he would think that he was on Pierre’s side for this battle; the truth is that Anatole is simply aware of Dolokhov’s prowess and pities his sister’s husband. Anatole knows what he is capable of and knows that Pierre faces the greatest threat at his hands, here, in the early hours of the morning, standing parallel on the snowy white terrain.

Pierre and Dolokhov stand as opposites. They circle, slowly, carefully, around an unseen circle drawn in the ground, Pierre’s steps tentative and overlapping while Dolokhov stands firm and proud. The pistol is cold in his hands. Moscow itself seems to be paused for their battle.

Dolokhov watches as Pierre raises his gun, hand shaking, his entire body seeming to shiver with the power in his pistol and the stillness of the cool air. Anatole notices too, his eyes blown wide. “Pierre, not yet!”

All of Dolokhov’s muscles tighten and he feels it, the stumble, the vibration of the gunshot, the kickback knocking into Pierre, the air rushing out of Bezukhov. The world momentarily seems to go all too dark and all too light, the black of the tall trees behind Pierre, the white of the freshly fallen snow, the dancing particles beneath his eyelids. The sky is cloudy. The air is harsh. No one yells for him, the fallen assassin.

Fedya’s mouth is open in a shout for himself, a snarl, teeth bared in the animal that he is. “No! Shot by a fool!”

There is no movement except for Pierre, who takes a step forward, his gun haphazardly getting waved in his attempts of an explanation, all caught up in his tongue: “No, wait, I didn’t mean –,”

Dolokhov’s body shakes with anger just as Pierre’s quivers with fear, coldness snakes through his body, he feels the open wound at his shoulder and the life dripping out of it, pouring onto the ground. “Quiet old man,” he growls, raising his gun even as the world tilts, “My turn.”

Pierre, standing as a target prepared for his awakening. “My turn.”

Anatole, far away now, yells an order to Pierre, or a warning, or something of that kind, though it is lost in the ringing of Dolokhov’s ears and the labored breaths he takes with every movement. Anatole does not exist on the battlefield. It would be a paradox within itself: the pretty product of society and wine cannot enter the sacred lines of combat.

Everything crescendos and Fedya closes one eye, points with both hands, sees the mark with his arms extended and his chest displayed, impossible to miss. Pierre Bezukhov, ever desiring death, ever yearning for war, ever asking for attention, importance, the delicious thrill of significance, something _occurring,_ something shifting the path of his life that leads to nowhere.

He shoots.

Hélène screams and while there is no one but them, Fedya feels as though he hears music. His hand, now heavy with the gun, drops to the snow, though it is already numb. His other hand rises to his wound, feels the slippery blood between his fingers. Everything tastes of iron and snow.

“Oh my mother, my angel, my adored angel mother,” Fedya says, his mouth jumping ahead of his mind: he sees Maria Dolokhova, hearing of her son’s imperfections, her son’s choices, her son’s battles of desire and arrogance. Her heart couldn’t take it. He allows the pity and shame to fill his chest and neck and he feels as though he can’t breathe, everything closing up. He loses a battle that he shouldn’t have begun and his mother, his mother, his mother.

“Take him away,” Hélène interjects, gesturing to Fedya’s pathetic form on the cold cold ground. He raises himself to his knees, one palm pressed against the earth and the other digging into the wound at his shoulder, his arm stinging all the way down.

She is speaking to Anatole, Dolokhov realizes belatedly, as the boy approaches with his hand extended before him. Coat wrapped up to his neck, fresh snowflakes tangled in his hair, lips pursed. His eyes flit over Dolokhov’s figure too quickly, logging the injury, the places where he’s pressed into the snow, the amount of blood dripping onto the ground.

His glance meets Fedya’s, and he forces a nervous smile.

Dolokhov reaches for the discarded gun with his uninjured arm and places it into Anatole’s open palm. Any act that he usually puts on has been suddenly dropped in the face of genuine danger; Anatole’s face expresses earnest worry, his eyebrows drawn together, his body arranged to spring up and assist.

Anatole offers his other hand out to assist as Dolokhov forces his body off of the ground. He stumbles his way to a standing position, bent over at the waist, holding in the blood that he feels seeping into his shirt and vest.

Fedya smacks Anatole away. He is not a weak man, he is not a failure, he cannot bear for his mother to think him a fool; he needs no help from Anatole, the boy who he saves every fortnight from his own ruin. The roles do not switch. Dolokhov does not need him.

Anatole flinches at the response, recoils. He stands a mere two feet away as Dolokhov rises, knees shaking minutely under his own body weight. Anatole’s footsteps echo Fedya’s, his eyes still trained on the wound and the grimace covering his face.

Dolokhov does not look back at him, but his gaze stays on Hélène. She looks at him with bored annoyance rather than any pity. He has failed the countess and his mother in a single missed shot that landed nowhere. His fingers dig deeper into the hole the gunshot has left, scowling.

There stands Pierre Bezukhov, the victor in a battle he didn’t want to win, his wife, the object which they fought over, and Anatole, a bystander to the scene with his hands hovering to help the pitiful assassin. Dolokhov becomes overwhelmed with his disappointment. He flees, steps heavy in the snow, following a path made on their trek here.

Anatole does not follow. No one does.

He escorts himself to the troika and thinks of his mother, his lover, and her husband; he thinks of Anatole, watching the duel, as if he could stop anyone or anything. He thinks of Pierre, arms wide in acceptance, and Anatole, standing between the two adversaries, wishing he could stop it. Anatole cannot stop anything he starts.

Dolokhov believes, for the first time in his life, that perhaps Anatole cared. Perhaps Anatole thought of someone other than himself. Perhaps Anatole did something without the thought of retribution or payback influencing him.

(Or perhaps that’s just the blood loss talking. He rides back in the troika in silence, unaccompanied, gazing at nothing and no one. The sun rises on the new morning and Dolokhov watches the sky.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, looking between the book and the musical: Hmm, which way should I stage the scene?
> 
> me, throwing both out of the window: 
> 
>  
> 
> anyways sorry this chapter took half of the fic, I really decided to do Preparations & Balaga & The Abduction all in one, huh.

Anatole visits Dolokhov’s home for the third time in the last two days with a nervous expression coating his features and holding a paper tightly and anxiously. He stands in the doorway, shifting, as he has been doing as of late; it’s as though he thinks Dolokhov will break at any moment.

“Good morning,” Dolokhov says, lowering the teacup from his mouth. It’s late morning and the sun peeks through the blinds hazily, the light is soft, the day is beginning. Anatole stands, fresh-faced and beautiful, under the natural warmth.

With the invitation inside, Anatole’s face loses its worried wrinkles and a half smile overtakes his face. “Feeling any better, Captain Dolokhov?”

Fedya hums in response and places his drink down before shifting his body into a more upright position for Anatole’s sake rather than his. “As good as I can be. And Pierre?”

“Pacing the room and rotting himself on wine, as always.”

“As always,” Dolokhov repeats, his grin matching Anatole’s. The easiness between them tugs at Dolokhov’s heartstrings, makes his throat constrict in the best way he can imagine. He feels overwhelmed with affection for a soft instant on a Saturday morning.

There sit a few moments where the two simply bask in the camaraderie between them, the gentleness of which causes Dolokhov to ball the covers. He coughs to break the quiet, which may drown his entire being.

“So,” Fedya begins, lifting up his chin as he would normally, a tease. “What brings you here, Prince Anatole?”

Anatole saunters into the room and takes a seat at the foot of Dolokhov’s bed. “Ah, well, I received a letter from Natasha,” he starts, reaching into the inner pocket of his coat and holding it out as though a piece of treasure. “It’s beautiful.”

Fedya reaches for the letter, to which Anatole immediately snatches it out of his grasp. “Be _careful,_ ” Anatole insists, then, gently pressing it into his open palm, “it’s art.”

Despite the suggested caution, Dolokhov takes it and scans it once over.

“In French?” Dolokhov asks.

“Yes, she’s a woman of the arts,” Anatole replies dreamily, “the letter is as enchanting as she is.”

“Translate it,” Dolokhov replies, giving it back to him. His grasp of the French language is conversational only, and he refuses to teach himself the nuances of the language; he knows the French of the battlefields and the French of the siblings, whispering taunts and pretty words in the language of delicacy, and it serves Dolokhov well enough.

Anatole obliges, rewriting her French poetry into a Russian echo, trailing off on occasion as he reads a particularly romantic line that would make any other man blush, but makes him smile to himself sweetly. Occasionally, he will pause his translation to say something like, “Ah, it’s beautiful in the French,” though he always fails to capture its charm in the retelling.

Fedya listens to the letter casually and with the same little care as he normally does with letters Anatole grants him from love affairs; this has become more of a habit than anything else. Natalya’s grasp on flowery words is impressive, yet shows her youth more than anything else. Whether or not Anatole’s translation does it justice is questionable. Anatole reads the French first in a whisper to himself, as if transcribing the words into his brain, before offering them to Dolokhov.

Anatole mutters something, and then says, “She signed _Natalie,_ ” tapping at the page with his forefinger, “in the French script.”

Dolokhov feels as though he should have learned to create thicker skin regarding matters of Anatole’s flirtations, yet he is as overwhelmed by his own annoyance as Anatole is overwhelmed by his own feelings of love. Fedya attempts to maintain his unaffected grace.

He takes the letter to refold it into its envelope and looks up. “And?”

“And,” Anatole says, releasing a breath of air, holding up his own letter, “I’m attempting to write a response. I want you to proofread it.”

Dolokhov does his best to hold back a scoff. “Me?”

Anatole reaches forward and takes Dolokhov’s hand holding the letter, grasping his palm. “Fedya,” he replies seriously, “You’re the most beautiful and romantic writer I know.”

Whether or not this is true seems irrelevant in the encompassing warmth of Anatole’s fingers around his and the earnest look in his eye that Fedya sees so rarely that he practically becomes incoherent at the appearance of it.

Fedya’s mouth is left slightly ajar at the action. “Uh,” says he, blinking hard and fast, “All right. Let’s see it.”

The letter, scribed on what is Hélène’s best parchment, is written in Anatole’s loose and looping Russian scrawl, which matches the attitude he normally takes in crafting such pieces. He begins: _Dear Natasha,_ curving out the final letter, ink dripping heavily at the extended motion.

The rest of Anatole’s letter reads more like prose than poetry in his characteristic style of bringing up a point and then supporting it as such with evidence as one would in an analytical essay as a schoolboy. It is no fault of his, but the lyrical grace of both his father and Hélène seems to be lost on Anatole. His writing is straightforward yet coated in nonsense descriptions and artistic language to depict the scene: Anatole riding to her home, Anatole sweeping her away, Anatole carrying her to a nearby town where they will be forgotten forever.

The subject matter is another issue entirely; elopement will not bode well for either party involved, and Dolokhov grimaces at even considering it. Hélène might be furious at this, and even more so at Dolokhov’s refusal to stop this while it is ahead, but one letter can do no harm, can it?

Dolokhov’s instinct has him saying something rather blunt, _This reads as no love letter,_ though the glimmer in Anatole’s eyes and the vulnerability that he has so clearly laid out before Dolokhov causes him to bite his tongue. There is sincerity and passion as a young man in love ought to express, but it comes out clunky in Anatole’s letter, and rather failing in any attempts to _seduce._

Instead, Fedya says, “You certainly put your heart in it.”

Unfortunately, Anatole beams, inching forward and closer to Dolokhov’s covered knee. “I did,” says he, fiddling with the tassels on the quilt, “but what do you think of it? What will _she_ think of it?”

Dolokhov runs his tongue over his teeth to stop himself from saying something brash, but he has his reputation for being blunt. “It could use work,” he replies, settling somewhere in the middle of crushing Anatole’s dreams and allowing him to believe that he’s a master writer, “it isn’t perfect.”

“It must _be_ perfect,” Anatole groans, leaning backward as to have his torso draped over Dolokhov’s legs with little care for the image this creates. “ _She_ is perfect.”

Anatole seems startlingly boyish in these moments of adoration, proclaiming his love as he throws his body on Dolokhov’s bed, though the attitude will wear off when they return to their normal selves, resumed after Dolokhov’s recovery and Anatole’s forgotten elopement. Still. Even here, Fedya is touched with quiet affection.

“Do you want my help?”

“You’re so much more romantic,” Anatole declares as he sits up once more, grinning, a joke. Then, in earnest, “Yes, honestly. Could you just fix the parts you think are too… plain?”

Dolokhov internally acknowledges that the minimum work for Anatole’s letter is a complete tearing down to only rebuild it. He says nothing of this. “Of course,” he replies, “I’ll rewrite the rougher spots; return tomorrow and translate it into French before sending it.”

Anatole opens his mouth and then closes it. “Thank you, Fedya,” he says, slowly, before leaning forward and pressing a soft kiss to the side of Fedya’s face, just above his temple. It is feather-light, and his hand hovers as if to cup the side of his face, but it returns to his side almost instantly.

Here, Anatole stands, dusts off his shirt, and resumes his jaunty step. The façade returns as it must, and he tugs down his vest. “I’m getting something to drink, do you want anything?” he asks, though he’s already half out of the room as he offers the question, and he’s calling “I’ll get a glass for you!” over his shoulder as he follows down the familiar hallway again.

Dolokhov releases a breath and takes the draft once more.

He realizes: he’s accepted writing a letter with a shot dominant shoulder and a sling holding up his arm, bed rest prescribed for two more days, and much better things to do than to fill Anatole’s wishes. There lies parchment in the nearest side table and a pen and ink atop it.

Despite this, despite everything in his brain informing him that he ought to stop Anatole’s bad ideas while he still can, he blots the feather with ink and lays out the paper. If he were a smarter man, or a more logical one, he would rip up any evidence that ties either himself or Anatole to elopement, rid of Natasha’s materials entirely, and force Anatole to forget her and the marriage before it advanced any further.

Anatole, a married man, Anatole, a fool. There is never any winning with him: only watching bitterly from the sides or going down with him. Dolokhov chooses his path not wisely or carefully but because of the light in Anatole’s eyes, the jump in his step, the kiss he pressed into Dolokhov’s temple. He is not a man of emotion, but he can be swayed.

He attempts to imagine Natasha as Anatole does, a goddess in the theater’s light, an angel of white and satin. He begins:

_Natalie,_

_I must love you or die—_

 

* * *

 

 

As Dolokhov recovers and he’s able to return to his affairs of drinking and dining, Anatole becomes a more integral feature of his daily life, and while the young Prince Kuragin should be dealing with societal affairs and balls and such, instead he lounges in Dolokhov’s household and amuses himself with his dogs.

He enters one morning in his fanciful overcoat of white and a whole line of buttons covering his chest. Dolokhov is still half dressed only in his suspenders and pants.

“Dolokhov!” Anatole yells as he enters, refusing to be announced. Rather, he bounds up the stairs leading to the private quarters which instinctually leads him to Fedya’s study, their primary location for concocting plans.

The prince enters with little care for Dolokhov’s state.

“Why are you all dressed up?” Fedya asks upon catching sight of Kuragin. His outfit is not dissimilar to that he wore to the opera, though it’s far too early for evening gowns and jewels. Anatole poses at the commentary, his body modeled like a Greek statue.

“I’m seeing my sister,” says he, secretively, “I’m going to ask her for a loan.”

Fedya continues to dress and attempts to ignore the glowing presence of Anatole in his study. “How much?”

“Ten thousand.”

Dolokhov sputters at the amount and practically drops his shirt. “ _Ten thousand_?” he repeats. “She won’t give you that, Anatole. She knows what you intend to use it for.”

Anatole lifts his chin and crosses his arms over his chest. “No, she doesn’t,” he replies airily, “and neither do you. I’m using it for the elopement.”

Dolokhov lets out a sigh before he can shut his mouth on the matter entirely; he’s grown tired of Anatole’s obsession with the elopement, yet he doesn’t have the energy or the heart to explain exactly the issues with it. Here stands a married man with letters from a young girl, practically promising an abduction. Anatole has been blinded with lust and what he believes to be love and yet, for some reason, Fedya cannot stop him.

“Anatole,” he begins, but does not know how he would end it.

Anatole ignores the interruption, saying, “ _And,_ speaking of, I’m going to need your help.”

“With?”

“Raising money,” he replies, moving from the doorframe to Fedya at his desk. “I cannot ask everything of Hélène and I trust you.”

Dolokhov cannot tell if Anatole simply knows the easiest way to manipulate is to go tender, or if he is genuinely pleading for assistance out of his care for Dolokhov. He gives in before Anatole even presses his arm. “How?”

Anatole smiles. “The same way we always do. You aren’t a master gambler for nothing.”

“All right,” Fedya says, grinning despite himself, stretching his shoulders and rolling up his sleeves. He managed to convince Nikolai Rostov to bet his family’s money and beat him ruthlessly, and he’s sure he can repeat the same motions to help Anatole. It is not his fault if someone chooses to gamble their fortune; it’s theirs and theirs alone.

Before Dolokhov can say anything more about the details of their bets, Anatole has placed both of his hands on either side of Fedya’s face, tilting him up to look at him deeply. Fedya’s breath becomes caught in his throat. There is a wicked curve to Anatole’s mouth, a glint in his eyes, and a perfectly collected calmness overwhelming his features.

“Thank you, Fedya,” says he, for what seems to be the third time as of the past week. Dolokhov cannot be sure where this earnestness and affection has come from, but it leaves him dumbfounded.

“My pleasure,” Dolokhov replies, distantly, slightly fazed. He makes the mistake of flickering his glance from Anatole’s glittering eyes, so close to his, and to his lips, still tugged up at the edges.

It does not go unnoticed; Anatole watches him, and, at the motion, his smile drops. The small amount of space between them grows heavy instantly.

Fedya wills himself to step away but he remains frozen under the gaze of Prince Anatole, the enchanting, the beautiful. He is a man of untellable beauty, charm, and attitude, his palms still pressed to Fedya’s cheeks, and at once, very quickly, the contact becomes electric.

Anatole, instantaneously, drops his arms back to his sides as though burned, startled by what he has done. Anatole is much braver than Dolokhov is in this; he immediately attempts to scramble his face into something unaffected, but even he is not that invincible.

He adjusts his coat, as he always does, and runs a hand through his hair. He looks ruffled, still snapping out of his daze.

“Off to my sister,” he says, backing out, wearing a forced smile that neither he nor Dolokhov believes. He bows at the doorway, saying, “I’ll return to you this evening,” before turning on his heels and showing himself out.

Dolokhov shakes his head, ignores the blood rushing to his cheeks, and begins to make a plan.

 

* * *

 

 

As affairs (or, rather, the _specific_ affair itself) have escalated, Dolokhov’s presence has become more and more vital and Hélène has become less relevant to Anatole’s schemes regarding Natasha. Anatole has already coerced ten thousand rubles out of her, and another ten thousand has been raised by Dolokhov and Anatole’s joint gambling efforts.

And they say dealing with cards and chips is fruitless work.

Everything comes together faster than either Dolokhov or Anatole expect, both getting tugged along from one act to the next, and soon Fedya has found a priest and passports and horses all awaiting their usage on the day that the abduction is to be launched.

(Dolokhov chooses to believe that the reason that he hasn’t stopped this yet is that he has not had a moment to breathe: he and Anatole are busying themselves to such a degree that Anatole falls asleep on Fedya’s couch, coat draped over the arm, at peace with himself and the world.)

On the morning of the abduction, Anatole awakens at daybreak, still at Dolokhov’s estate rather than that of his brother-in-law. He dresses before the house has even risen and by the time Dolokhov stumbles down the stairs in his sleepy step, Anatole is already wide awake pacing the floor with the two dogs tripping over his heels.

Anatole, upon hearing the creak of the hardwood, looks up as if startled. His eyes are outlined in exhaustion yet there is a nervous energy that he emanates, even from across the room. “Fedya,” he sighs, relieved.

Though Anatole opens his mouth to speak more, Dolokhov asks, “How long have you been awake?”

His hands flutter as if to shake off the inquiry. “Is everything all set?”

“Yes, the priest will arrive at noon and the witnesses at two. Balaga will be here closer to five. We’ll serve supper, say goodbye, and arrive at the Rostov’s by ten.”

Fedya pauses, realizing precisely how much time and energy he has put into Anatole’s elopement and how much he will continue to put in in the coming day; he places himself as the dashing sidekick, posed at Anatole’s side up till their departure to Kamenka, where—

Where, presumably, they will never see each other again.

Not that this is a problem, or perhaps it is, or perhaps Dolokhov does not have time to think of the repercussions of the abduction as of present, he is far too busy bounding forward with little care for what anyone thinks of him or Anatole, and there would be no point in wasting energy on hypotheticals, he can only live in the present.

“All right,” Anatole says, distantly, or rather Dolokhov is the distant one between them and Anatole simply seems far away. The Prince gnaws on his bottom lip and rubs his hands together nervously, a tic. “All right.”

Dolokhov would attempt to comfort Anatole if he knew how to comfort himself; the cold rush has already gone through him and the veil surrounding their entire plan has suddenly vanished. He, as well as the world, becomes shaky; he realizes the flaws in the foundation, which will crumble the entire world.

He says nothing of this.

“Get some tea,” says Dolokhov without particularly thinking about it, a typical placation technique. He feels quite dizzy and overwhelmed by merely his thoughts, which seems almost as foolish as Anatole is.

Anatole leaves the room, nodding, and his gaze lingers on Dolokhov as though he has watched the expression shift on his face, the cold sweat he breaks out into. It is embarrassing and uncharacteristic for Fedya specifically, the levelheaded assassin, the genius, the mastermind behind this plan. Anatole is the worrier between the two of them.

Anatole returns a mere few minutes later, carrying a tray as a servant would, looking rather calm and innocent once more. This is what he has dreamed of, what he has wanted since he first laid eyes on Natasha at the opera, the same opera which was a scarce five days ago. The same opera during which Anatole pressed his leg against Dolokhov’s and leaned into his ear, asked him who that beautiful goddess in the box was, insisted that he needed to see her before the opera’s end.

Perhaps Dolokhov should have simply lied to him, feigned ignorance for the Countess, and let the whole matter drop entirely. A part of him knows that Anatole is too driven to allow that, yet the hypotheticals he could have taken advantage of fill him with shame, the same overwhelming sense that he is unable to breathe, just as he felt after the failed duel attempt.

Dolokhov has not accepted the tea that Anatole has offered him. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he says. He isn’t, but lying to Anatole is more of a second nature than anything. He takes a sip of the tea and does not react to the hot liquid running down his throat. Anatole watches him carefully and simply, judging his actions, but he says nothing and turns away.

The prince leaves the estate an hour later to prepare all the necessary papers for the priest who will be arriving soon and to pack up the clothing that he has left at the Bezukhov household for his stay. Dolokhov, on the contrary, busies himself with ensuring the transfer of rubles will not go awry, pausing to pace the room just as Anatole this morning. He restlessly rises from his seat and watches the action occurring outside the window, a terrible concoction of bored and nervous. He drums his fingers along the windowsill before resuming his work halfheartedly.

He supposes that he and Anatole are anxious for different reasons: Anatole worries that it will go wrong, while he worries that it will go right.

After endless moments that may have been hours have passed, announced at the front door is the Kuragin sibling that Dolokhov would not have expected: Countess Bezukhova stands in her heavy fur coat, hands at her hips, fresh snow tangled in her hair. She is enchanting, as always.

Fedya runs out of his study to meet her and presses a kiss to her hand, still gloved. “Dolokhov,” she says, smiling wryly. “Preparing?”

He looks up at her; her expression is unreadable. He moves to take the cloak from her shoulders, but she shrugs it off herself and hands it to him before he can.

“Yes,” he answers. The air between them is peculiar and unsteady, as though a secret is hanging over their heads.

“And my brother?”

“Out.” He moves to let her step past him into the sitting room. “I’m surprised you missed him. Visiting your house for his belongings.”

“Ah,” she says, taking a seat at the armchair, but the look on her face implies she desires to say more. The two of them have not met alone since the beginning of Anatole’s entanglement with Natasha, primarily because the very idea of the Countess Bezukhova visiting a convalescing Dolokhov would blow their fabricated scandal out of proportion, a snowball that neither would be able to stop. They know this dance well enough.

Yet, she is here now, her beautiful face contorted into a solemn frown.

He asks, without a care for either of their modesties, “Why are you here?”

“For Anatole,” she replies sharply, as though accused of something, “I need to speak to him about the elopement.”

Dolokhov pauses, judging her expression. He had assumed that he was alone in the doubt of Anatole’s plan for sweeping away a young engaged girl, and that Hélène, always holding the most confidence in Anatole and admiring his boldness, would follow mindlessly with his schemes. Her hefty donation implies that, despite the harshness with which she criticizes her brother, she believes in him and entrusts him to make this plan go correctly.

Dolokhov remembers, quite suddenly and powerfully, Hélène smiling to a young Countess Rostova, her fingers rising to her pearls, a seductive grin overtaking her face as she leans in to speak to the pretty young daughter of Count Rostov.

Anatole had told him, during one of his many visits during recovery, that he had convinced Hélène to speak to the girl to ask her to their ball that evening. Dolokhov had not stopped him, either through his failure to listen or his failure to connect the action with its effect. He sees it now writ on Hélène’s face.

“You don’t approve,” asks Dolokhov, though it is more a statement than an inquiry at all.

“I think he’s going too fast.”

“You’re thinking of Natalya,” he says instead, a challenge. He knows he is right, and he knows Hélène would mock him if their positions were switched.

She grinds her teeth together pointedly and drops her murderous glance to the ground. “She’s young,” replies Countess Bezukhova, “and better than a hurried, illegitimate marriage.”

Dolokhov has no counterpoint nor any reason to support her; he knows that the Kuragins are closer to the girl in question, much closer than they ought to be. He can see Hélène, slinking up to the young Natasha, her hands sliding up the girl’s bare arms, leaving Natasha to lean a little closer, press a little harder, push them both over the edge.

She feels Dolokhov’s gaze upon her, the question in his glance. “It’s _objective,_ Fyodor,” she replies, harshly, all bite, “She doesn’t deserve to be disgraced.”

“Hmm,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest, “and what were you going to say to Anatole?”

She contorts her face into a solemn, emotionless expression. "Why did you give him the money?" he continues, though the question is less for Anatole's sake and more his, the curiosity tears him apart the more he considers every step of this plan, every time it could've been stopped, and every time it was allowed to continue.

"You know why," she says, and thus the silence sits between them.

Dolokhov considers: Hélène Bezukhova, the queen of Society, rich and powerful in every right, willingly giving her foolhardy brother ten thousand rubles for an affair that she doesn't approve of or encourage in the slightest. Perhaps, yes, the idea of throwing them together amused her at first, but it's suddenly far too real and far too thought out for her to allow it. 

Her brother enters the scene, charming, smiling at Hélène as though she were the only woman he ever cared about, yet his wicked tongue betrays the notion: he asks for the rubles, which he knows she has, knows she won't deny him of. He presses a kiss to her cheek, promising her a payment back, thanks falling from those beautiful lips before Hélène can even speak; then, easily, he skips out of the room with a lightness to his step, an awful smile on his face.

Dolokhov very suddenly realizes that he and Hélène have more in common than he ever expected.

Now she looks up at him, and her eyes are daggers in a twisted sort of gorgeous way, her face outlined by a shadow. “Do you actually think this will go well?” she asks, seriously, her voice hard and strained. “I can’t be the only one seeing fault in his plan.”

Fedya begins to say something, but doesn’t know what exactly he would be saying, what exactly he means. She isn’t wrong, he does, but his words always get caught in his throat. Or perhaps he can never find the words. Or perhaps the spell of Anatole is as real as the young heiresses believe it to be, that he is able to charm with a single look.

Now, though, he says nothing because he has nothing to say, because she is right, because the wrong Kuragin has figured him out and there’s no way to get out of this now.

Hélène scoffs. “I suppose both of us are blinded by love, then.”

Before Dolokhov can denounce her, deny her, refuse anything and everything that comes from her delicious mouth, she rises, takes the fur coat which Dolokhov has tucked under his arm, and exits without a glance behind her.

He curls his hands into fists to resist an outburst, presses his face into his hands into the table. Anatole’s effect is not one of blinding, but one of silencing: his eyes work as well as they always have but now, suddenly, every complaint or suggestion stops short before it can leave his mouth.

Perhaps it is some will of God, if Dolokhov believed in one, that Anatole goes forth with his misadventure and causes the fall of Natalya Rostova and himself unwillingly, whether or not this plan succeeds; if they do elope, Count Rostov’s prettiest daughter is disgraced along with the rest of their family, and if they fail, Anatole would be forbidden to roam the streets of Moscow as long as she, or her family, lived here.

(Dolokhov supposes that the other option would be sending him to a faraway village or Petersburg, but both would be the death of him; he finds the former boring and the latter full of dull and uptight government officials who refuse a moment of pleasure. Anatole would feel more constrained than ever, Dolokhov knows.)

He shakes his head and stumbles back towards his study and does what he always does when confused, startled, or otherwise out of place: he drinks. The whiskey dribbles over the edges of his mouth, tilting back and back and back.

It tastes divine.

 

* * *

 

 

Anatole and the priest and the witnesses are gathered in Dolokhov’s sitting room, sipping tea amicably and attempting to make this seem as though Anatole is not planning an illegal elopement as a married man with a girl otherwise engaged. Anatole charms, as he always does, an arm perched on the table, though his expression is shaky; he is nervous.

Dolokhov’s study, which has been effectively ruined in the parallel apprehension between its owner and Kuragin, now appears base and cruel in Dolokhov’s shifting eyes; bear skins hung grotesquely from the walls, papers strewn carelessly on the desk, the general state of affairs scattered, just as they are.

Anatole has been pacing between the sitting room (to speak with the guests) and the study (to express anxieties and confirm transactions with Dolokhov) with an excited air about him consistently.

Now, however, Anatole stands in the corner of the study, posed at a mirror, lathering soap onto his cheeks. He bounces from his heels to his toes in an enthusiastic gesture full of unnecessary energy. He has left a bowl of soapy water upon the desk and he holds the straight razor at his throat, closer than it needs to be.

“Everything ready, Dolokhov?” Anatole asks, his chin upturned, eyes still locked in his own within the mirror. Dolokhov, organizing papers on his desk, looks up.

He nods, as though his words might betray him. All for the best.

Dolokhov sorts through letters and receipts silently as Anatole runs the knife along his skin. He smiles an apprehensive sort of smile to himself and Dolokhov watches, the razor running over the curve of his throat, the bit of foam scraped from his skin.

Anatole walks to and fro along the back wall of the study, swinging his arms and exhaling in exaggerated huffs. His uniform is unbuttoned down to the top of his breastbone, which exposes the whole of his neck and the expanse of his chest. Dolokhov finds it irritating.

In fact, every aspect of Anatole suddenly reads as maddening: the consistent tap of his feet on the floor, the final touch of soap still left on his cheek, the self-satisfied grin on his face. Fedya hears his heavy exhale and curls his hands into fists, tries not to explode.

Anatole turns on his heel and clicks his tongue for no reason at all; Fedya, almost immediately, fails.

“Now wait,” he says, loudly and jarringly, standing in a quick and frantic motion that leaves the chair scraping behind him, “Give it up now, why don’t you, while there’s still time.You really better drop it all. Do you know —,”

Anatole, who has frozen himself in place with his silhouette outlined by the line of candles behind him, has an annoyed and careless expression on his face. “What, teasing again?” he scoffs, walking casually towards the doorway as if to go and enter the sitting room, “Don’t talk nonsense. This is no time for your stupid jokes.”

Fedya, striding between Anatole and the doorframe, says, “I’m not joking, I’m talking _sense._ This is a dangerous business; come here, come _here._ ” He takes Anatole by the arm and brings him to the opposite side of the room, out of earshot from the witnesses and priest. He says, quieter and harsher, bite and snarl, Dolokhov the assassin once more, “Why would I joke about it, me of all people?

“Who found the priest, raised the money, got the passports and the horses—,”

Anatole throws his arms out and looks scandalized, as though challenged. “Do you think that I am not grateful?”

“And now you’ll carry her away but will they let it stop there?” Dolokhov asks, and then, tapping Anatole’s forehead in an exaggerated gesture, “You haven’t thought this through.”

Anatole smacks him away petulantly. Fedya continues, louder, voice harder and strained as though there is physical exertion in the act, “Now listen to me: they’ll take you to court and convict you.”

The Prince Kuragin, disturbed and used to running from his problems, shoos Dolokhov out of his way and begins to flee, acting accordingly to how he always does. Dolokhov, without thinking, seizes him by the neck and pins his back against the desk, tarnishing the paperwork he’s been organizing for the past hour. A nervous habit. Just as Anatole’s pacing, Anatole’s sighing, Anatole’s bouncing.

“You’re already married and you’re playing with a little _girl,_ ” he spits in Anatole’s face, feeling the strain of his neck beneath him, and _oh_ the power is the most divine thing Dolokhov has felt in years; here he stands with the beautiful Prince Anatole gasping beneath him, his hand around his neck, the boy’s chest heaving. The blood runs faster in his veins. He smiles, all teeth.

Anatole, whose hand has come up to the back of his neck in order to soften his grip, heaves himself up with all the strength he can manage. Dolokhov redirects the motion with his hand, which sends him struggling towards the window frame, which thus Anatole grips onto desperately. “Don’t you know, don’t you _think,_ don’t you—,”

The Prince Kuragin, his face puckered up unattractively, scowling and grimacing, replies in a bitter shout, “Nonsense! Didn’t I explain it to you, didn’t I, what?”

Dolokhov braces himself for the inevitable, which is Anatole’s hundredth explanation of a conclusion he has figured out himself, one that is not and cannot be logically sound, as all things involving Anatole. His attachment is stubborn and grounded in absolutely nothing, and if Dolokhov were a different man, he would believe that Anatole had never been into Society before, consider he seems to understand nothing as to how it functions.

“If this marriage is invalid, then I’m off the hook, but it is valid, it doesn’t matter. No one abroad will know a thing about it. Don’t talk to me, don’t don’t _what what,_ ” Anatole cries with a feverish, frantic attitude that only increases as he continues, gets into Dolokhov’s face, before flinging himself away: “Ah, go to hell now,” he says, and then, going from clutching his hair to grabbing Dolokhov’s hand and placing it on his heart, “It’s the very devil; here, feel how it beats.”

Dolokhov feels the harsh, uneven beat of Anatole’s heart, feels the warmth of his bare skin against his palm, feels the heavy breaths that Anatole takes desperately and raggedly. His chest rises and falls as though pained, agonized, overwhelmed.

Dolokhov attempts to even his breaths out, too. He finds, with Anatole’s eyes trained on him as though he were the only man to exist, he cannot even begin to try.

He watches the look in Anatole’s eyes shift from the raw anger of their argument to a distant, lovesick twinkle. It makes his heart catch in his throat for a reason he cannot define, and he feels Anatole dropping his hand as he looks out in the distance where an imaginary Natasha stands.

“Ma chere, quel pied, quel regard,” Anatole whispers to himself in French, “what a foot she has, a glance; a goddess!”

The prince moves towards the doorframe in his dizzied step, throwing himself with a dramatic flair; he mutters something to himself, surely about Natasha, his fingers coming to his lips as if to trace the lines of them. He looks up, in a hurried startled motion, at the servant standing at the edge of the sitting room, awaiting Dolokhov.

He is here to tell of Balaga’s arrival: there is no turning back now.

“Now then! Nearly ready? You’re dawdling,” Anatole shouts theatrically, grabbing Dolokhov’s jacket from the hanger beside the door, already exiting, “the driver is here, the driver is here! Balaga is here!”

Dolokhov leans over his desk, pours a shaky shot of vodka, and downs it. He knows, however their abduction goes, he is going to need a drink.

 

* * *

 

 

Evidently, Anatole Kuragin will always end up at the center of a party, whether or not he ought to be there, whether or not he has business afterward, and whether or not anyone tells him a bad idea.

(In fact, the latter may be more of an encourager than a hindrance; one of the two witnesses, Khvóstikov, inquired as to whether they should be hosting a gathering of some sorts beforehand, to which Anatole brushed him off with a light hand and a, “ _mon ami_ , you will love the Ruska Roma!”)

Balaga brings with him the normal women and men of the clubs which they frequent, all of which have already been drinking and are already prepared for whatever Anatole has in mind as his farewell party.

Anatole, who now stands proud in the center of the room, perched atop a chair with a knee propped up on a table, lifts up his chin and smiles wickedly. The tall glass of wine which Dolokhov has been continually filling is raised far above his head in a toasting gesture. His eyes are laughing with him.

“Well, comrades,” he begins, “we’ve had our fun. Lived, laughed, and loved. Friends of my youth, when shall we meet again?”

His gaze flits over the crowd: dancer women, ladies of the night, a girl or two who he may have kissed in the shield of darkness, and, briefly, Dolokhov, who only looks back with wide eyes.

“I’m going abroad. To our health?”

Balaga, half-drunk, grinning like a madman, “To your health!”

The voices and figures around him, all of whom may have names that Dolokhov has forgotten or not cared to ever learn, raise their glasses with him, echo the toast in an awkward, uneven callback: _to your health!_ they yell at different times, wine sloshing over the edges of their glasses, before drinking as much as they can in a single sip.

The buzz, which has been so comfortable for Dolokhov in his days with Anatole, now feels ringing and overwhelming. As he, too, attempts to raise a glass, he finds himself surrounded on all sides. He tightens his grip and cries, forcefully, “To our health!”, though no one hears.

Eventually, above the clinking of glasses and excited shouts from anyone and everyone, Balaga bounds forward, yells, “Let’s go!”

A few of his favorite dancers are at his heels, but Anatole’s piercing voice halts them in their tracks: “Wait, wait, wait!

“Shut the door!” he shouts, and someone complies to create an exaggerated clunking noise of the wood against the doorframe, “First we have to sit down.”

The group drops in a single, terrible noise of objects hitting against the floor, bodies knocking into various objects, a wine glass catching the leg of a table, the leg of a dancer catching the arm of another. No one says a word. “Yes, that’s the way,” Anatole announces, sitting in the chair which he was just standing on, crossing one leg over the other. “That’s the way.”

Fedya takes the quiet moment he is permitted to reflect upon the journey which he has ahead of him, and the much longer one that lays before Anatole. His chest still rises and falls heavily for no reason at all. The silence, unfortunately, allows him to _think_.

It is not as though he cares about Natalya Rostova, or Anatole’s forgotten Polish wife, or even what this implies for the Rostovs, for the Kuragins, for anyone who can be associated with this plan; rather, he thinks only of Anatole, raised above a crowd in the excitement of the night. The sun is just set, and it is the time of day during which a proper gentleman would be just stepping into his carriage to attend a soirée, or an opera, or any sort of outing. The night is young. Dolokhov’s heart beats fast.

He likes to believe that he would be able to stop this abduction, even after his failed attempt in his study a mere hour ago. He likes to believe that he could grab Balaga by the collar, shake some sense into him, and redirect their route to any number of places. The club, the theater, the Bezukhov house.

A part of him realizes that there would be no point, that it is a snowball already out of his grasp and running towards the bottom of the hill before anyone can stand in its path. Inevitable, just as all things are, just as he will always run towards entropy.

He imagines the scene: Anatole, Dolokhov, the footmen, Natasha. The troika and Balaga a few yards behind them, the cold air stinging Dolokhov’s bare face as keeps himself at the gate, Anatole foolhardily leaping forward, walking through the uncleared snow, his eyes squinted, an ocean for him to swim across, and Fedya, only able to watch—

Anatole rises from his seat, shaking Dolokhov out of a daydream. “All right,” says he, and the group reacts without a moment’s hesitation, heading for the door in an excited, childish state.

Fedya raises himself much faster than he had intended, and he puts out his arms in a melodramatic gesture, crying, “Wait, wait, wait, _wait_!”

Everyone stops cold.

“Where’s the fur cloak, huh?” he asks, looking to Anatole, then the crowd, then Anatole once more; the boy in question has a surprised, innocent, confused look on his face. “I have heard what elopements are like. She’ll rush out more dead than alive… _just_ in the things she’s wearing.”

There’s a lighthearted whooping from Balaga’s direction, which earns a few laughs, a whistle.

“If you delay at all, there’ll be tears, and _Papa!_ and _Mama!,_ ” he continues, now walking towards Anatole in an easy sway, putting on a show, more for Anatole than anyone else, “and she’s frozen in a minute and must go back…”

Directly next to Anatole is a young woman, perhaps one of the frequent club-attendees, wearing a fur coat as to his liking. Dolokhov seamlessly pulls it from her shoulders and drapes it over his own, now standing right before Anatole. He turns around, back to the prince, taps Anatole’s hands as if to encourage them to go to his waist, and says, “But you wrap the fur cloak ‘round her, and carry her to the sleigh.”

He twirls around in Anatole’s arms to see his glowing visage, finds Anatole's hands on his hips, watches the glint in his eyes. “That’s the way, that’s the way.”

Anatole echoes, “That’s the way.”

The crowd creates an amicable buzz around them, but Dolokhov has only now realized precisely how close he has gotten to Anatole, whose hands are still placed on his shoulders. All for the show, of course, the scene that he and Anatole create, like opera-singers, or French actresses; yet his chest has tightened and his eyes cannot seem to leave the prince’s.

Thankfully, from the doorframe, Balaga calls, “Let’s get out of here!”

They follow, as they always do, Dolokhov shoves the fur cloak into Anatole’s arms and runs after Balaga, hurries past anyone in his way, and gets as far from Anatole as he can get. His mind bounds ahead and he’s grateful for it, otherwise forgetting Anatole would be all the harder.

 

* * *

 

 

Balaga leads the troika as he always does, with a frantic, terrifying excitement half borne out of his general attitude in life and half due to the two glasses of wine he downed twenty minutes prior. The troika in question only contains Anatole, Dolokhov, and their driver; the witnesses and priest are riding separate. Best they don’t see Anatole like this.

The Prince, who has been fairly calm throughout the beginning of their proceeding starting with Balaga’s arrival, bounces his leg and brings his fingers to his lips, biting at the skin there.

He, just like Dolokhov, must feel the general apprehensive air of night. The sky has turned into an all-encompassing, oppressive shade of black, and the cool air whipping past bites at their exposed faces. They both go slightly numb, but perhaps it’s for the best.

The two of them have foregone speaking, as with the speed they’re traveling, most of it would be caught up in the wind and forgotten in the space behind them. Balaga is beating the horses the death, though neither Anatole nor Dolokhov say anything of it.

Evidently, Anatole knows the pathway to the Rostov home, and as such perks up upon approaching their section of the boulevard. Speaking for the first time since their departure, he yells over the breeze, “We’re close!”

A gentle snowfall began perhaps fifteen minutes ago, though it seems less gentle with the velocity with which they travel through the streets. Snowflakes are tangled in Anatole’s hair and sprinkled over the shoulders of his coat. It’s enchanting.

The Prince rises in his seat, gripping onto the back of Balaga’s chair. Over the shouting of their driver and the wind, Anatole asks, “Are you ready?”

Dolokhov gives him a curious look through his squinting. “Are you?”

He does not know if Anatole simply didn’t hear or he does not want to consider it, but he faces forward once more and lets the gush of air consume him. Dolokhov supposes it’s meditative, in a way. This may be the last quiet moment he gets for a long, long while.

Fedya raises himself, standing tall in the harsh night, and feels very suddenly that something is going to go very, very wrong.

He knows better than to say anything of it; Balaga is already slowing down his horses gradually as to save their hooves, and Anatole digs the heel of his foot into the floor of the troika nervously. Anatole is chattering nonsense, once again going over the plan, once again shouting to Balaga his orders, once again imagining Natasha.

Dolokhov taps him on the shoulder and presses the fur cloak into his open arms. Anatole mouths, rather than says, _thank you, Fedya._ He means it. Dolokhov lurches forward, though it’s more at Anatole than the motion of the troika.

Before they have even completely slowed, Fedya begins the action: he whistles, deep and low, loud enough for anyone in the courtyard to hear. This is the impetus that begins the plan, and Dolokhov realizes, startlingly, that he has no choice now but to rush forward and  _go._

Anatole pounces out of the troika as the horses clop to a stop, cloak tucked underneath his arm, in a rather graceful gesture which Dolokhov attempts to repeat. He stumbles, but Anatole does not notice. They are both too focused to notice anything. They reach the opening of the gate, awaiting their entrance.

In the distant light of the house, a maidservant dressed plainly calls out, “Come in through the courtyard or you’ll be seen!” in a hoarse voice, as though whispering and shouting at once.

Anatole once looks back at Fedya, whose mouth is left open in the action yet to come. Dolokhov nods, and Anatole does the same. He charges forward like a warrior, his head tilted down, just as commanders would have told Dolokhov as a recruit. Face down, eyes up, weaponry forward and raised. There is no battle cry.

“She’ll come out directly,” the young woman adds as Anatole approaches, and there is a nervous yet excited expression on her face.

Dolokhov roots himself at the gate, pressing a gloved hand against the cold metal; he feels the jolt through the leather, grips tighter all the same. The figures become fuzzy in the low light (only that of a full moon which hangs high and luminous in the sky; it feels, somehow, like a bad omen rather than a good one).

He watches: Anatole follows the maid through the courtyard, takes a sharp right along the pathway, and presents himself on the porch, the hero, the knight in his glistening armor ready to save the princess.

Then, time seems to slow and speed up all at once.

Mayra Dmitrievna, _le terrible dragon,_ the fiercest woman in all of Moscow, creates a shadow across the courtyard, she growls, she shouts, she screams: “You will not enter my house, _scoundrel._ ”

She, standing upon the second-floor landing, seems a giant compared to Anatole’s figure. If Dolokhov could make out his features him, he would see the cold rush of fear running through his blood, the eyes widening, the steps backward almost leading him to fall off the porch into the snow.

The maidservant, in some measure of kindness, shoves Anatole off of the house which creates the impetus for him to bound towards the entrance from which he came, glancing back and tripping over himself and the ice and the darkness.

Just then, Natasha, angelic in a white gown (Dolokhov has a flash of his thoughts earlier; there she is, dressed in a nightgown, perhaps in another world this is a successful mission and Anatole wraps the cloak around her bare shoulders), tears her way out of the house. Her mouth is open in a scream of Anatole’s name, but he does not see nor hear.

A footman who has been chasing the crowning jewel of the Rostovs grabs her by the waist and pulls her back inside despite her shouts, they are lost under Marya Dmitrievna’s orders, under the harsh cold wind, under the ringing in Dolokhov’s ears as the blood rushes to his heart.

Fedya finds himself running into the action, crying, like a wounded man, “Anatole, come back! Betrayed! Betrayed! Anatole, come back! Betrayed, Anatole!” as though they are the only words he knows, the only words he has ever known.

He reaches out as though he is going to save the Prince Kuragin, fleeing and tripping over himself and shouting an order that no one hears, and in the night he almost feels like a Renaissance painting; Fedya, elegant, fingers grasping at him like God to Adam, and Anatole, throwing his body forward with the passion of a young boy, ah the Romance of it, ah the beauty.

Anatole runs and runs and runs. He approaches, he passes, he barrels forward with an impetus that Fedya has never seen before, and Dolokhov finds himself reaching for him once more as they rush towards the troika.

Their voices are both raw as they shout orders to Balaga, _go, go, go,_ he can barely process their words before he is hitting the side of his horse and yelling too.

Dolokhov can hear both nothing and everything at once. Behind him, _le terrible dragon_ is preparing for the second part of her battle: Natalya. Anatole does not care. Anatole could not care, he only sees his life flashing before him, the scene once more, Marya and Natalya and himself.

As the troika catches speed, Dolokhov realizes that no one follows them. They know the culprits and they know that he will be disgraced before he can touch Natasha again.

The carriage charges forward, the horses galloping unevenly, and as such Balaga shouts at them. Dolokhov can understand nothing. He only sees Anatole, the troika, the landscape zipping past them before he can even begin to process.

Then, Anatole takes his face in his hands, leans forward, and screams. He cries. He presses his palms deep into his eyes until he will see black and white and the colors in between, digs his fingers into his skin, and shouts her name, _Natalya, Natalya, Natalya,_ he says, he repeats, he runs his voice to the ground and shakes.

 _Natalya, Natalya, Natalya,_ he echoes himself like a prayer, his teeth are grinding against each other, _Natalie,_ he bends himself over at the waist and presses his knees into his throat as though he wants a release from the pain. 

He sobs. He shouts. He is a fallen Prince, a disgraced hero, a knight who has been stripped of his armor and of his princess and now he is left to cry for what could've been. 

Dolokhov watches. He can only ever watch as the Prince ruins himself, ruins his family, ruins his world.

He bites his tongue and tastes blood to avoid speaking. Anatole, Natalya, Marya. The snow tangled in Anatole’s hair, the boyish smile on his face, the bounce in his step, heels to toes and heels to toes. He can see nothing else. Anatole, Dolokhov, Marya. His razor scraping at the skin along his throat, his fingers hovering at Dolokhov's waist, his eyes alight as he toasts to himself and to everyone.

Dolokhov cannot stop himself. He places a hand on Anatole’s shoulder and feels the sobs wrack him. Nothing else to do. He sees the black sky, the white moon, and Anatole beneath them. Even as he screams and brings himself to ruin, he is as enchanting as he ever was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: yes, Anatole wrote the first draft of his letter in Russian specifically so Dolokhov could read it. yes, he writes on fancy parchment just for Dolokhov.
> 
> additionally, i made the executive decision to believe that Dolokhov does not know the flowery aspects of French; he presumably writes most of his letters in Russian, though at the time French would be an upper-class style to write letters even casually/in a friendly manner (see: Mary's letter to Julie). i believe Dolokhov picks up French with his longer exposure to High Society, but he probably grew up in an all-Russian household, i think. haven't finished W&P yet though.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's this? a christmas miracle?

There are endless seconds, perhaps minutes, perhaps hours, where Anatole and Dolokhov sit in silence, both allowing the air to simply rush past them as the troika flees from the Rostov household. Balaga will perhaps shout at the horses, or the passersby, but he seems just as stunned into quiet as they are.

Dolokhov supposes he should spend the blissful free time contemplating what will happen next, but he finds that he cannot think of anything past the scene behind them.

Anatole has given up crying, likely because his body has run out of tears to give, and he simply sits with his large eyes outlined in red and his glance lost in the landscape. There’s an uncharacteristic vulnerability to which he presents himself, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, occasionally a hand scrubbing at his face.

He sniffles like a child with the flu, awaiting the consolation of his mother. She never comes.

“Stupid,” Anatole says, though he is more an echo of his former self, his voice now raw and softened with the hell he has put himself through. “Unbelievably stupid.”

Fedya inhales deeply and draws his arm around the back of the seat, close enough to Anatole’s shoulders to be touching them, but he hovers still. “We planned it,” says he, which is not a lie nor a sugarcoating of the situation, but rather a blunt statement of an unhelpful fact. “It didn’t go our way.”

Anatole knows this. Balaga knows this. Marya Dmitrievna and Natalya Rostova, screaming at each other back at the house from which they came, know this. Sonya Rostova, most of all, knows this too.

The prince brings his thumb and forefinger to press the delicate spot between his eyes. “Where did it go wrong?”

If Dolokhov knew, it would make his situation all the worse. He does not know whether he would thank or detest the entity which has caused the entire downfall of the abduction, the elopement, the fairytale ending abroad.

“I don’t know,” he says instead, watching Anatole’s form closely, “I don’t believe we’ll ever know.”

Anatole groans, curling his hands into fists, eyes closing tightly as if to block out the world around him. “What will I do without her?” he asks, but it seems as though that the question is directed at God rather than Fedya himself.

Dolokhov waits ten, twenty seconds before responding, assumes an offhand air. “Forget about her.”

“I love her,” he says, as though affirming himself more than anyone else, and then, “What would you know about love?” burying his face in his hands.

“Not love,” Dolokhov replies, “propriety.”

The Prince looks up, his face reddish and young, eyes glistening once more and cheeks ruddy. “Propriety?” he repeats in a mocking tone. “Did you think of that when sleeping with my sister?”

Dolokhov freezes.

He supposes that he never thought up to this point, his brain stopping short before even considering the situation in which Anatole figures out about himself and Hélène. Or, rather, he never considered Anatole genuinely listening to the rumors, the whispers which he has so easily avoided all of his life. Beautiful, awful, ignorant Anatole.

Fedya stammers, thinking of a hundred things he could say and another hundred things he shouldn’t: how, why, who, why does he always catch the things about Fedya that he is never supposed to, how does he remain both so ignorant and so smart at once.

Anatole’s face is contorted into an unattractive, pitiful, tear-stained grimace. “When did you start fucking her?” he spits before Dolokhov can find the words, find the questions, find the answers. “Why did you never think to tell me?”

“Anatole,” Dolokhov manages, which makes sense, since he’s sure that Anatole’s name will be the end of him, if he could utter nothing else it would be this.

Anatole, gripping onto the lapels of Dolokhov’s coat once more, curling his hands into desperate fists around the cloth closest to his neck: “Answer me!”

If Fedya was a weaker man, or perhaps a stronger one, he would shove the Prince off of him and tell him that he has no right to demand the details, tell him that it is nothing of his concern, tell him that whatever made up affairs he engages with Hélène are not within Anatole’s right to worry about.

He does not. Instead, he says, “Anatole,” once more, breathing heavily in the harsh winter air, helpless in every right, only left to look into Anatole’s awful eyes, stained with red, tired and pained and betrayed.

“It’s a deception.”

The Prince opens his mouth as if to ask a question, his grip loosening, his face suddenly awfully close to Fedya’s. Dolokhov finds his arms bracing against Anatole’s, holding onto the fabric at his shoulders just as Anatole is doing. They are parallel images, reflected across the mirror. Anatole stops himself, as though he doesn’t know what to say.

Dolokhov finds that he cannot meet his eye. He looks to the places where his hands dig into the material of Anatole’s jacket as he says, “Hélène and I fabricated an affair to be less… suspicious.”

“In regards to what?” Anatole asks, innocent and childlike in the tone which he assumes. His voice is far quieter than it was just a moment ago.

“You,” Dolokhov says, which is not exactly wrong.

The beautiful prince blinks and furrows his brow and looks down at the rattling floor of the troika as they bound forward to anywhere. “She was worried about…?”

“Yes,” says he, and now both of their arms are dropped to their sides, but they cannot seem to look away from each other.

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Fedya says once more, and then, venturing forward timidly, “How did you…?”

Anatole, despite his teary eyes and pink cheeks, manages a glare. “I’m not a _fool,_ ” he mumbles in a childlike manner, “I hear the gossip. I watch you.”

“I––,”

“Don’t apologize,” Anatole replies, rather despondently. “You are free to do as you please.”

Dolokhov clears his throat and presses forward, making a motion to take Anatole’s hands in his. “Anatole––,”

“ _Fedya,_ ” he interrupts sharply, drawing his eyebrows together in an unpleasant, worried expression, “Shut up.”

Just as Anatole says this, something seizes Fedya, a wave of passion and affection and pure _feeling,_ a cold rush sent through his stomach which causes his chest to tighten and constrict. He is not unfamiliar with this; it is the same shiver sent down one’s spine just before pulling a trigger, the freezing of the muscles, the stopping of the breath.

He holds himself still in an inhuman state for a few seconds, as though waiting for Anatole to _do something,_ but the look on the prince’s face says that he expects the same of Fedya.

He distantly feels the wind hitting the side of his face, the flap of his collar fluttering in the brisk air, the places where his body presses into the troika, and the other places where he is pressed into Anatole. They are together at the knee, Dolokhov’s hand is around Anatole’s shoulder and touching the cloth of his coat, and Anatole has somehow found his fingers hovering near enough to Dolokhov’s thigh to touch it.

The points are electric.

Quickly, as though the both of them have received some message from God at the exact same second, Fedya uses his hand behind Anatole to grab him by the nape and pull his lips against his own; just then, Anatole daringly moves his hand onto Fedya’s thigh and grips it tightly and at once leans in to kiss him.

Both of them are out of breath before they even begin.

Anatole’s face is unnaturally warm from crying and still damp, but he takes Fedya with such force and determination that Dolokhov almost forgets about their state mere seconds before. Anatole’s other hand curls into his jacket at the torso, attempting to pull him even closer.

Anatole kisses as though it is the last thing he will ever do, as though he is drowning, as though Fedya were the only man on Earth and his lips were keeping Anatole alive.

They simultaneously pull away with the same exertion with which they were drawn together, and even though it has been perhaps twenty seconds, their chests heave unevenly between them.

Dolokhov wishes to speak, but finds that he does not know how. Anatole has stunned him into silence before, but never quite like this.

“I,” Anatole says, but then stops himself and takes the hand once on Dolokhov’s thigh to the side of his face. His fingers brush the tender skin beneath his ear, the place above his temple, the line of his jaw. Fedya leans into it and shivers at the contact, at Anatole’s cold bare hand against his face.

Dolokhov cannot tell if he regrets it yet. He looks up at Anatole from beneath his eyelashes and breathes and breathes and breathes.

“Did you believe it would help you, too?” Anatole asks, quietly, the _it_ being the affair, or rather the deception.

He means to say: _Did you believe it would help you forget me?_

Dolokhov, still pressed close to Anatole, the fog from their breaths intermingling in the scarce air between them, looks down and withdraws his arm back from around Anatole’s shoulders as to bring it into his own lap. “I suppose,” says he, furrowing his brow, “but it was your sister’s invention.”

Anatole has an ironic smile on his face. “Of course.”

Fedya remembers, very suddenly, the inquiry which has haunted him since his acquaintanceship with the Kuragins, the doubts as he watches Anatole pressing a tender kiss to her cheek, or wrapping his arms around her waist, or lounging across a couch with his head pressed into her lap. Both divine and unholy in one.

“You and Hélène,” he begins, slowly, hoping that Anatole will interrupt him and not make him speak the words, “do you two… have you ever…?”

Anatole’s grin has shifted from something rather wry into a delicious wicked one, his teeth glistening in the low light, his eyes shining as though he were teasing. “Fedya,” he says in a normal volume, devilishly, and although Fedya expects him to say more, he doesn’t.

Dolokhov looks at him with inquiring eyes, he could not joke about such matters.

Anatole moves from outright mocking to a quieter, more tender form of play. “You mustn’t believe everything you hear,” whispers he as though it is a secret for the both of them.

Fedya, finding himself unable to respond, still as unaware as he was before, resolves it by shutting them both up in pressing a soft kiss just to the right of Anatole’s mouth.

Pulling away, Anatole has a fond expression on his face, a weight lifted off his shoulders, some sort of antidote in Dolokhov’s lips.

They stay like that for a few more moments, both startled by their own actions. Anatole, with a prepared calmness, leans in once more to kiss his lips, long and slow, before moving up to the skin of his cheek uncovered by his beard, and then just at his Adam’s apple. There is a very thought-out gentle warmth with which Anatole kisses him, a hand rising to hold Dolokhov by the ear. He closes his eyes softly and at then pauses at Fedya’s neck, bites his lips.

“Thank you,” he whispers into his skin, almost as if he didn’t want Fedya to hear it. Fedya does. The troika rides on, bringing the fallen heroes back to their homestead, allowing them to rebuild themselves once more.

 

* * *

 

 

Anatole, perhaps overwhelmed with the events that had transpired in the past evening, promptly passed out in Dolokhov’s guest bedroom upon their arrival back to his home. Dolokhov may have expected a little more of him, but he simply carries the prince to his lodgings and leaves him there, looking finally at peace.

Despite his normal way of conducting himself, Anatole then promptly awakes early the next morning in an enlightened energetic way. He begins to rush out the door just as Dolokhov came down the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“Oh,” says he, startled, turning around in the foyer where a servant stands holding the door open. “I need to see my sister.”

Something about their peculiar situation makes Dolokhov wish to disallow that, knowing that the two of them are simply waiting to get caught by Marya Dmitrievna. The amount of time that they have is limited, though neither of them can know how long.

“Hold on,” Fedya says as he descends the stairs, giving the footman a hard nod as to dismiss him; this is a private conversation between the two of them. “Where?”

Anatole has an incredulous expression on his face. He does not seem to realize the gravity of their situation. “Her home,” he replies airily, “would you like to join me?”

Dolokhov says, “Anatole,” and crosses his arms over his chest.

“What is the worst that could happen, Fedyushka!” exclaims Anatole in a theatrical tone, pointedly emphasizing the diminutive as to further patronize his worries, “Marya Dmitrievna won’t seek me out in the house of my own _sister._ ”

Dolokhov brings his face very, very close to Anatole’s and holds him tight by the coat lapel. “We are waiting to get caught,” says he in a much more growl-like voice than he had intended, “we have to face them elegantly.”

“‘Face them’?” Anatole parrots, “I’m not _facing_ anyone. We’re planning when I can next see Natasha.”

“You intend to _reenter_ the Rostov house?”

“So I shall meet her elsewhere,” he replies with a flap of the hand, pushing Fedya off of him, “I love her.”

Dolokhov cannot tell if he simply misconstrued their conversation the evening before, and the kisses following it, or if Anatole is just as indecisive and reckless as he appears to him now. He attempts to contort his face into something very solemn and confused, but he can feel the sharp prick of hurt making his grimace look all the more unpleasant.

“ _Forget_ her,” Dolokhov says, repeating the words that he had said the night before, now grabbing Anatole by the wrist as he attempts to reach for the door himself. He feels like Dolokhov the assassin, seizing Anatole by the arm, insisting.

“You don’t _understand, mon ami,_ ” Anatole continues, frowning, “I know how to conduct myself in such affairs.”

The truth of the matter is not that Anatole knows how to conduct himself in these affairs, but rather Hélène and Dolokhov are both very good at smoothing over the creases in his messes and stopping scandals before they have begun.

Dolokhov has half a mind to say this, but bites his tongue.

“Now,” Anatole announces, as though the matter has been settled, “let’s not be cruel. I’ll return in two hours.”

Here Anatole takes Fedya by the back of his neck, pulls him in for a kiss, presses him against the wall. Dolokhov has the intent of refusing, but he finds himself giving in before he has even begun; he opens his mouth willingly and brings a hand to Anatole’s hair. It lasts, at most, fifteen seconds, yet all the air leaves Fedya’s lungs.

“Goodbye,” says Anatole, before pressing another, split-second kiss to Fedya’s lips before turning on his heel and leaving.

Dolokhov feels the door shutting before him and the cold emptiness which now fills the foyer, yet he is unable to do anything about it.

Perhaps a part of him believed that Anatole was on the path to turning over a new leaf, a quieter and more sensible man, one who cares and realizes the outcome of his actions; the man born just as Dolokhov kissed him on the troika riding back home, his eyes wide, his cheeks flushed.

Wishful thinking will be his downfall: Anatole is the same man as he always has been and always will be.

He hopes and prays that a part of him, a single aspect of all that is Anatole, is changed– that he has learned something, that his experiences have influenced him, that he is an altered man, if not a new one.

Anatole charges forward into the world, into Society, into the lives of young heiresses without thinking twice, and perhaps he never will, but if Anatole had truly loved her (or, rather, if Anatole _does_ truly love her), he would be affected by this.

He was, in a way, affected by this. His fingers digging into his skin as he cries her name in the troika home, _Natalie, Natalie, Natalie,_ a forbidden angel, she in heaven and he in hell.

No, Dolokhov knows better than to waste his time wondering about Anatole’s potential, what Anatole _may_ do, how he _may_ react; there is no point. He scrubs his tired face with his hand and returns to his study.

For now, they must sit and wait. He knows better than to run.

 

* * *

 

 

Anatole returns, as promised, two hours later with his shirt unbuttoned despite the frost, his eyes rather wide and fearful, and a frightened mussed-up quality about him.

“What happened?” Dolokhov asks with an offhand air before even looking up from his paperwork, and as he does, the motion stops short. Anatole looks like he’s seen a ghost. “Anatole?”

“I,” he begins, yet he interrupts himself by stumbling forward towards the desk and placing his hands on the edge as if to steady himself. “I was with Hélène,” says he through a breath, and it appears as though he forgot how to inhale and exhale steadily, his chest heaving with the effort.

Fedya, despite himself, stands and comes around to the other side, placing a hand on Anatole’s shaking shoulder.

“You were with your sister,” he repeats, attempting to curve around and see Anatole’s face.

“And– we were in her home.” The prince screws his eyes shut and grips tight on the table with one hand, brings his other to grab Fedya’s wrist. It is his way of asking for comfort, he knows. “We were talking about– how to see Natasha again.”

Dolokhov considers, momentarily, how Hélène must be reacting to the fallout of the abduction, he remembers the peculiar look in her eye and the power in her stride as she exited Fedya’s house just beforehand. By now, news of the failed elopement must be spreading, and Fedya wonders whether she will be the one to shush it.

Of course, this leaves Natalya Rostova in a state of ruin, too, but Dolokhov cannot tell if she cares enough to worry now. Anatole will always end up being the most important figure in her life, no matter how she tries to twist it.

(To be fair, she will always be his, too.)

“And?” Fedya says. He rubs a circle with his index and middle finger right at the tight spot of Anatole’s shoulder.

“And– Pierre came in,” replies Anatole through a deep exhale, one that is shaky and nervous. “He insisted he must speak to me.

“He held me by the neck– like this,” he says, taking Dolokhov’s hand and holding it to his neck, to which Fedya’s fingers instinctively curl around loosely. He can feel Anatole’s heartbeat in his throat. “Seized me and… threatened me– almost killed me.”

Dolokhov withdraws his hand and bites his lip. “For what reason?” asks he, though he knows _why,_ just not precisely the exact purpose.

“The letters,” Anatole says, “and he asked that I leave Moscow.”

“Well?”

“He gave me money– as to ensure that I get out,” he replies shakily, though he gains more confidence with Dolokhov here. Anatole reaches into his vest pocket and presents forth the money which Pierre stuffed into his hand before shoving him out of the door, Dolokhov is sure.

He gives Anatole a curious expression. “Will you leave?”

“I must,” he says, shaking his head, “I can’t stay here.”

Anatole swallows hard and Fedya watches him; he knows that this has been a mistake, and he believes that fleeing is the only way to solve this. He has and will leave Natasha behind at the drop of a dime. There is an anxious air about him, a primal fight-or-flight instinct taking over Anatole’s every action.

“It’s a bluff,” Dolokhov replies insistently, “He won’t do a thing to you.”

“He practically smashed my head in, Fedya!” Anatole shouts, turning out of his grip harshly and moving out of the room, “He will kill me, Marya Dmitrievna will kill me, Count Rostov––,”

“Pierre wouldn’t challenge you.”

“He challenged _you_!” cries the prince, and his fingers shake minutely in the tight fists he has made. “He _shot_ you!”

Dolokhov brings himself face-to-face with him, says, “You cannot run away from all your problems.”

“It isn’t running away!”

Fedya sighs heavily and lethally; he exudes a coldness and terror that Anatole himself has never had to face. “You always do this,” he replies in a low, harsh tone, stepping away.

“What are you accusing me of?” Anatole asks frantically, voice going high, following him as he moves away.

There is a betrayal in his confusion, his nervous energy; he feels as though Fedya, out of anyone, should not be questioning him. Fedya knows this. Fedya hates it.

“Whenever you face an issue you _flee,_ ” he growls, “and you leave others to fix your _messes._ ”

“What are you implying?”

Dolokhov’s eyes go wide in an incredulous, astoundingly annoyed expression. “You leave Hélène and myself to clean it up!” he says, bringing his hands up and looking as though he wants to do nothing more than to choke Anatole into silence. “You have never thought of anyone other than yourself, and you know it, and _we_ know it, yet we feed into you _anyways._ And you never realize how or _why_ we do it and you—,” He cuts himself off with a huff. “Never mind, Anatole.”

“What––,” Anatole begins, his mouth open in a stupid confused cry, but he closes it. There is a deep hurt in his eyes, an understanding that Dolokhov never expected him to be capable of. “What do you think I believe?”

“What?” Fedya snaps.

“What do you think I think is the reason you and Hélène help me?”

Dolokhov furrows his brow in a manner as to suggest he doesn’t particularly care what Anatole is thinking, he simply wishes to move on and forget the root of his relationship with Prince Kuragin. “Anatole––,”

He continues with a pointed force, “I know you think I’m a fool,” he says, and Fedya lets out a forceful breath of air, a scoff, “but I pay _attention._ ”

Dolokhov thinks of questioning him, but finds Anatole ignoring him, going on, “You… care about me. I know that.”

“You know, but you don’t _understand,_ Anatole,” he replies in a harsh bite, “Forget it.”

“You can’t _do that!”_

“Do _what?_ ”

“I… care about you too _,_ Fedya!” Anatole shouts, as the conversation itself has come to a crescendo that leads up to this, refrains for a moment as both blink and breathe and _stop._

There is the heavenliness of the pause. Something Fedya feels often with Anatole, but right now, he hates it more than he ever has. “No,” he says, quietly, violently, “No, Anatole.”

He begins to speak. Dolokhov does not let him. “You _don’t_ care for me. You believed– still believe– that you were in love with Natalya. You don’t understand any of this.”

“This?”

“ _Love,_ ” Fedya says, and the word sits heavy in the air, on his tongue, shame overwhelming the anger and drowning him, Fedya Dolokhov the assassin is no more in the eyes of Anatole, simply Fedya Dolokhov the lover, the weaker, the fool.

It takes Anatole a moment to watch him fall away, he places this rendition of Fedya into the scenes of before; Dolokhov shivering as Anatole throws an arm around his shoulder, Dolokhov letting his eyes follow Anatole across the room, Dolokhov writing a love letter for a girl he barely knew. The list goes on. Years of actions and reactions with a purpose, a meaning, something Anatole once thought to be undecipherable but now, clearly, with a solution.

“You meant it,” is the first thing Anatole can manage, his mouth hanging open, his eyes flitting over Dolokhov nervously as though this were a physical ailment rather than a mental one.

“What?” Fedya stands like a hunted animal, his hands curls into fists as if on the defensive. “Meant what?”

“When you,” Anatole begins, cuts himself off in doing another once-over of Dolokhov, and then continues, “When you kissed me.”

Dolokhov blinks. “What?” he asks, “Did you _not_ mean it?”

“No, no,” says he in a frustrated tone, shaking his head, “I simply meant… No, I don’t know. I don’t know at all.”

Fedya, now, is not sure which one of them needs comforting, which one of them ought to make the first move. He stands, petrified, in his place. “Anatole,” he says, not knowing why.

There is a gentle shift in the Prince Kuragin, and in a slow, careful way, as though Dolokhov may flee at his motion, he approaches. His coat, somehow, hangs too loose on his shoulders, his entire self rather small beneath the man he once was. Both Fedya and the dear prince are changed men, it seems.

Anatole’s arms find themselves slotting around Dolokhov’s waist, his face pressing into his neck, his fingers curling around the cloth at the small of his back and holding tight.

They stay like that for a few endless moments, though Fedya finds himself wishing they _would_ never end; Anatole grasps onto him desperately, as though he is the only person that he has left. A part of Fedya knows that this is untrue, but his heart tightens at the thought of it.

Slowly, in the same soft manner, Anatole raises his face and brings one of his hands to the side of Dolokhov’s, cupping his cheek. His eyes flutter shut and he leans in, presses a long and slow kiss to Fedya’s dry lips, and sighs through his nose at the feather-light quality of it. Fedya’s breath catches in his throat.

When Anatole pulls away, Dolokhov’s close to shaking. “Anatole,” he says, squeezing at Anatole’s hips.

“Fedya,” he replies, moving as to bump their noses against each other, his eyes still closed and his mouth slightly open.

“This won’t solve all our problems,” Fedya whispers, though despite the words that fall from his mouth, he further presses himself against Anatole, brings their bodies even closer. His lips hover just over the prince’s, too close and too far all at once.

“I know,” Anatole says, and for once, Dolokhov believes it.

Anatole then closes the space once more, and though he begins with the steadiness that he once had, it is Fedya who presses further; this, here, is the closest he has ever been to Prince Kuragin, and it is the most divine thing he has ever encountered, Anatole is sculpted and bony and perfect. His attempted grace slips away when Fedya backs him up against the nearest wall and kisses harder.

As Dolokhov shifts to mark his neck with a fevered energy that he wouldn’t have expected from himself, Anatole gasps and brings his fingers to Fedya’s hair. “ _Fedya,_ ” he sighs as the man in question mouths at his Adam’s apple before shifting lower.

This, in itself, sends a shiver down Dolokhov’s spine– ruining the Prince Kuragin has always been something he wished to see, and though a part of him realizes precisely how bad of an idea this is, he doesn’t dare to stop himself.

Fedya slips his hands underneath Anatole’s shirt, and at this Anatole makes another sighing noise, cold fingers against warm skin. He draws circles up his back, yearns to learn the lines of his hips and waist.

Dolokhov goes back to his mouth, kisses desperately. Anatole’s lips open instinctively, without a moment’s hesitation. It is Dolokhov who goes further, presses closer, pushes them both the extra mile.

As such, Fedya pushes his knee in between Anatole’s legs and, at that, Anatole _moans._

The noise in itself is something divine; it is repeated in his motion of grinding back down on Fedya in his little needy fashion, cheeks flushed a pretty shade of pink. Dolokhov’s mouth rises into a smirk at that, and he increases the amount of pressure, digs and digs and _digs._

Anatole looks as though he can’t breath, his lungs tightening and his eyes widening. Fedya pulls away a second later.

Then, in a careful motion, Dolokhov raises his hand and places it right around Anatole’s neck, mocking the action that Pierre must’ve executed earlier, but there’s a calculated gentleness in it.

Anatole jerks up at the force, nods as if it’s causing a strain on him, and tilts his head back. Fedya’s fingers curl around tighter. His own actions seem foreign to him, but in the moment, it feels exactly like the correct ones, watching as Anatole shifts and rises and fights against his own body.

Fedya watches, silently, as the breath leaves Anatole’s lungs.

(He does not stop until Anatole’s fingers tap at Fedya’s wrist, nails digging into his knuckles, and when he releases him, Anatole gasps for air and brings his fingers to his throat. He decides, upon looking at Anatole’s expression, that this was a particularly successful experiment.)

Fedya, mouthing at Anatole’s neck once he has regathered himself, mumbles, “Bedroom?”

The Prince Kuragin nods and Dolokhov leads them upstairs, taking him by the hand and bounding up the steps.

Fedya disposes of his clothing quickly, and Anatole follows with a similar desperation, hands shaking and running through his hair whenever he gets a free moment. Fedya is not sure why Anatole is nervous, but on the other hand, he isn’t sure why _he himself_ is nervous. He takes Anatole’s hand and raises it to his lips before dragging him onto the bed, grinning in a wolfish sort of way.

“Have you done this before?” he asks against Anatole’s skin, shifting as to properly straddle him. The covers are still unmade from this morning and the room itself is in its general state of disarray, but neither he or Anatole particularly notices. He takes Anatole’s skin between his lips and _sucks,_ hard, just enough to cause that dull pain settle at the spot on his neck.

“Not– like this,” he manages, moving his hips and getting just a taste of friction. “ _God,_ Fedya.”

Anatole himself, as an entity, is a beauty, especially now, naked and writhing and simply _begging_ for Fedya to ruin him. His lips are curved into an open shout, a cry, a request; his body is never quite still, shifting in impatience. Dolokhov longs to look at him for hours, but Anatole’s quiet movements crescendo as Fedya refuses to touch him.

“ _Please,_ ” he whines, trying to pull Dolokhov down by the nape. He is obviously already hard, though he seems to have little shame in this fact. Fedya gives in, ducks down and kisses his mouth.

Anatole groans into it, opening his mouth willingly and pressing his body further against Dolokhov’s. He curls one hand into his hair and uses the other to grip onto the muscle of Fedya’s arm at the bicep.

“Fedya,” he manages between kisses, out of breath, “ _now._ ”

He can only oblige. Dolokhov sits up, still straddling Anatole, and leans over to his bedside table as to search for lubricant. Anatole moves his hips beneath him, a tease, or perhaps an insistent reminder of his hardness.

Anatole tilts his head back. “Hurry _up,_ ” he grumbles as Fedya digs in the drawer, “come on, Fedyushka.”

Fedya dips two of his free fingers into Anatole’s mouth, past his full lips, and onto his tongue. “Shut. Up.”

The prince moans around them, closing his eyes and sucking, running his tongue over the pads of his fingers. Fedya wills himself not to shiver, not to react, not to give Anatole the satisfaction; this is still him and Anatole, after all, and he refuses to allow the boy a victory.

He removes his fingers from Anatole’s mouth (wet, warm, lavished by the prince’s efforts to distract him) in favor of coating them with lubricant and flipping him over.

Anatole groans before he even enters him; the experience of getting teased is enough to overwhelm him. He reacts violently to the smallest of touches, everything about him shaking slightly, which is almost ironic: Fedya had always assumed, in this scenario, (because of course he has imagined this scenario, his hands on Anatole’s skin, Anatole beneath him, pliant and ready) that _he_ would be the one to overreact, the heavenly Anatole existing on a completely different plane.

Fedya believes that he likes the turnaround, especially as he presses two fingers inside of Anatole and hears his cry.

He fucks him with Anatole’s face pressed to the pillows, his whole form giving to Dolokhov’s every move. Anatole first cries when Fedya refuses to touch him and again when he finally does, too little then too much. The coldness of the air, the warmth of his hand. Anatole bites at the covers, which don’t quite silence his sounds, but they’re enough.

Fedya urges him to flip over once more and lets his fingers wander to his neck, but they are just shy of wrapping around him. He leaves hickeys there instead and Anatole comes in between them, spilling over himself as Dolokhov fucks him throughout. Fedya follows a few minutes later, his teeth scraping against the lines of Anatole’s collarbone, his motions far more desperate than they ought to be.

He comes with Anatole’s name half-broken on his lips, the feeling of Anatole’s body shifting beneath him and accepting his every move. When he pulls out, he presses a kiss to the point just behind Anatole’s ear, and he shivers all over again.

He cleans the both of them up with a towel and Anatole is practically falling asleep before he’s even finished; when he falls back into bed, the prince curls around him and presses his face against the muscle of Dolokhov’s arm.

“Sleeping?”

“Yes,” Anatole mumbles, nuzzling into his skin. “Long day.”

“Yes,” says Fedya, running a hand through Anatole’s hair and relaxing against the pillows. “It has been,” and he relaxes against Anatole’s weight and lets himself slip into sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Fedya sits upright. It has been perhaps an hour of the two of them sleeping, Anatole curled around Dolokhov and the pillow, his expression now something of blissful ignorance. The night has settled and it is getting colder– Fedya will attend to the fire a few yards away, just a remainder of embers, in a moment when he finds the ambition to, or the time.

And then: the knocking again.

He pulls himself from the bed and stumbles towards the doorway in a sloppy motion, one that is messy in the way that a man is after sex, and he reaches to tug on his trousers that have been lying on the floor. “What is it?”

“Countess Hélène Bezukhova to see you,” replies the servant through the door, and Dolokhov, at once, freezes. He does not know why she would be here, what could compel her to visit him at this time of night. She must understand the implication, the suggestion– Anatole being here is bad enough, not that anyone will whisper of _that._

(Or perhaps they will– surely the public would believe it, they believe there is no end to Anatole’s depravity with regards to affairs, and Dolokhov is not much better.)

Fedya dresses in a frantic, hasty manner before hopping down the stairs and pausing halfway down upon making eye contact with Countess Bezukhova, frozen like stone before the power of Medusa.

She is just as divine as she has always been, poised in a rather elegant gown of black and purple, her hair curled perfectly around her face. She, with her eyes sparkling, looks Fedya up and down in a rather content manner, her glance lingering on his bare feet and his unfastened suspenders.

“So,” she begins, “what have you been up to?”

Dolokhov gives her a peculiar look, his eyebrows furrowed. “Why are you here?”

“My brother,” says Hélène, innocent, a look which she pulls off rather well but Fedya knows her too intimately to believe it. “I figured he would be here.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh,” says she, glancing down at her gloved hand, “you knew that he’d run to you either way.”

Fedya descends the stairs. “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing, Fedya,” she replies, sweetly. The smile does not quite reach her eyes. “Is he here?”

He contemplates lying for half a second, but there would be no point; she, a creature not of this world, would see right through it. He has, somehow, never felt more vulnerable than here before the Countess Bezukhova.

“Yes,” he replies after a moment. “Sleeping still.”

“Ah,” she clicks her tongue and turns her back to Fedya, leading the both of them into the sitting room– he finds that he cannot resist following. It’s a rather damning state to be in, constantly under the spell of the Kuragin siblings. He supposes, once he’s as deep as he is, there’s no way out.

“Why do you wish to speak to Anatole?”

She attempts to maintain the glare, but something shameful and afraid sneaks into her glance for half a moment, a fleeting second of terror that Dolokhov can scarcely recognize on her features. Only now does he notice the line of red that traces the spots beneath her eyes, the run of makeup. She shakes it off with the smallest of motions, though she now drops her tease. “He fled from the estate as soon as he could. Pierre all but shoved me from the room to ‘speak with’ him.”

“And?”

“And,” Hélène says, with a note of irritation, not directed at Fedya precisely, “Pierre was left red-faced after Anatole was gone, his study looked as though it had been burgled. Pierre refused to say a word about it.”

Dolokhov considers for a moment, pursing his lips, settling on the arm of the sofa. “He said that Pierre choked him,” replies Fedya, “demanded that he leave for Petersburg, threatened him if he didn’t.

“It’s a bluff,” he adds, rolling his eyes.

“It isn’t,” she retorts, a little terrified and a little angry, a bite in her voice, “Pierre has gotten rather _protective_ over Natasha.”

The very image of this causes Fedya to open his mouth stupidly and close it once more, rather confused but not intent on questioning. He wonders, momentarily, about the state of affairs between Hélène and Natalya, but the fallout of the failed abduction is far more pressing than whatever the married Countess feels for a young heiress left behind in the aftermath. Anatole, as always, will be the most pressing concern.

“So you think he should leave?”

“He _must,_ ” Hélène replies, and he realizes once more just precisely the similarities between the two Kuragin siblings, “Pierre or _le terrible dragon_ will catch up with him if he doesn’t. And her betrothed. _Ex-_ betrothed.”

Dolokhov grimaces. “You think Bolkonsky would be a threat?”

“To _Anatole_?” she asks incredulously, glancing once up the stairs to where he must still be soundly sleeping, as though she fears him listening. “He cannot hold himself in battle. He’s all charm and Bolkonsky wouldn’t take any of it.”

“You know him well?”

Hélène sighs, rather exhausted with the line of inquiry. “Pierre adores him,” she says, “invites him all the time. He’s impossible to miss. Pierre would have him over for every hour of the day if he could.”

“Oh.” Fedya considers this for a second, but chooses to think nothing of it. “The point remains– Anatole wouldn’t make it in St. Petersburg.”

Hélène looks at him, a sort of very serious examination of his features. “You think too little of Anatole,” she replies, “I have faith in him.”

A part of him desperately wants to scoff. Another part of him knows that this would result in Hélène detesting him. It isn’t as though he dislikes Anatole– the exact opposite is true, he thinks of Anatole curled into the covers and his heartstrings are pulled from his chest– but, rather, he’s aware of his limits. Most of those preside in boredom, and Anatole getting tugged from the action would result in a quick breaking down of his activities and choices. Petersburg is a whole different beast. One that Anatole would not easily adjust to.

“You wouldn’t be there with him.”

“Yes,” she says, for the both of them are all too aware of the image that Hélène must maintain, “but you could.”

His heart rate jumps. “No, no,” he announces, shaking his head, glaring at her and that little glint in her eye, “Hélène. I _can’t._ ”

“Why not?”

“I have– I have a _duty._ ”

“To whom? To _what_?”

“I refuse to flee when things go wrong.”

Hélène opens her mouth as to continue questioning him, a very obvious form of disappointment in her expression, but at once there is the sound of someone jaunting down the stairs, a very light step, a content little hum coming from between their lips.

Anatole, at once, sees his sibling standing in the sitting room in her evening wear; the smile splits his face. “Sweet sister!”

He has a sort of laziness about him, his hair still mussed, and Fedya recognizes the shirt that hangs awkwardly on his torso as his own, rather than Anatole’s. The way which he carries himself makes it clear that there is no point in Fedya denying any of his actions with Anatole. He sloppily wraps his arms around Hélène’s shoulders, grins.

“What are you doing here?” he asks against her neck and presses a firm kiss there, something Fedya watches with a careful suspicion, not that he dares to say a word. 

“Came to check on you, darling,” she replies, though there’s an uneasiness in her tone, and she sends Dolokhov a questioning look: _is he all right?_

“I am _perfect,_ ” declares Anatole as if answering the unspoken inquiry, now pulling away and walking towards Dolokhov and _no, no, no,_ he slips his arms beneath Fedya’s and holds him around the waist.

Hélène looks between the two of them as though she is waiting for them to reveal the events of earlier today with her. Dolokhov feels himself flushing. There is a hickey that _Fedya_ has left along the line of exposed skin at Anatole’s neck where the ill-fitting shirt hangs loose.

There is an uncomfortable moment of silence between the three of them which Anatole does not seem to notice.

Eventually, Hélène says, “Are you prepared to leave for Petersburg?”

“We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“ _We’re_?”

Anatole smiles sweetly and squeezes his arms around Dolokhov’s waist, his chin pressed against the hardness of his shoulder. “Me and Fedya,”

Dolokhov’s entire body tenses beneath Anatole’s weight. “I didn’t–,” he begins to say, just as Hélène starts with, “ _Fedya_ didn’t mention that–,” and at once both of them stop, and though Hélène just had a mischievous grin on her face moments ago, it drops rather quickly when she notices of the expression of her brother– who is now pulling away from Fedya, standing upright and looking slightly horrified.

“What do you mean?” he asks, “Are you not coming with me?”

“ _Anatole–,_ ”

“I’ll give you a moment,” Hélène says, backing out of the sitting room and showing herself into another section of a house, though Fedya knows she will remain within eavesdropping distance. Once she has left the room, Anatole backs a few feet away from Dolokhov, his eyebrows furrowed.

“Are we not going together?”

“Anatole– I never _said–,_ ”

“I _know_ you never said,” he interjects, his voice going high, his face puckering. “I just thought that after the–,”

“ _Anatole–_ ,”

“What?”

Fedya stands parallel to him, his breath caught in his throat, everything about him frozen again. It is not as though he doesn’t know what to do, as if this is a hard choice: it is an easy one, which makes it all the worse. “I can’t.”

It is not that Fedya does not care about him, for he has gotten himself entangled in a web of affection and care for Society’s two greatest menaces that, somehow, keep their reputation above water despite the scandals that cling onto them as if wet clothing; it is rather that Fedya knows better.

He knows decisions and precision and he has known all along that he would not be able to follow Anatole to Petersburg, and perhaps Anatole has known that too. They are too different, too separated by circumstances, too defined by their past and their choices to run off to a town together and pretend that nothing exists outside of them. Anatole, maybe, could pull it off on his own, for he has mastered the art of willful ignorance, but Fedya never could and never would.

Except, Dolokhov has spent so long convincing himself that he doesn’t need Anatole that he has never considered the idea of Anatole needing him, not in a fiscal or outward way, but rather something deeper than that.

Anatole looks as though he wishes to speak, but he doesn’t know how.

“I’m sorry,” Dolokhov says, though he doesn’t know why he would apologize; it is as much his fault as it is Anatole’s. He dares to take a step closer, his hands awkwardly out as an offer to take Anatole’s in his.

The prince immediately realizes the weakness that he’s shown; Anatole sets his jaw and tilts up his chin before. “It is what it is, Fedya,” he says wryly, and though his tone is ironic his expression is a hurt grimace, one half-masked by the smile he attempts to hold onto.

Dolokhov sees right through it, but does not say a word.

Anatole stands his ground perhaps two feet away from Dolokhov, an aspect in his falsified countenance that pulls at Fedya’s heartstrings. Not that he shows it, not that he cares. His face is as blank as it always has been, hard and cold and harsh. Dolokhov the assassin, Dolokhov the killer.

The prince looks him up once, twice. “Are you sure?” he asks, caving just in the slightest. The beautiful descent of Anatole, always flying too high and too low and never quite knowing an in between.

Fedya– stupid, awful Fedya– takes Anatole’s hand in his and rubs a firm circle into the hard line of his knuckle. Kuragin tightens beneath him, though can only watch. “I must be,” he replies, which isn’t quite true, but isn’t quite a lie. He’s gotten very good at telling those. “You’ll be all right.”

“I’ll be all right,” he echoes, and tries to smile. It isn’t like there is anything more to be said or to be done, so Dolokhov does not say or do anything. He traces the lines of Anatole’s hand with his own finger and hopes that his presence is enough.

(It isn’t, and Anatole is shaking just in the slightest, but they both don’t know what words would express it, so they don’t attempt to find them.)

After a minute or two of Anatole’s hand pressed into Dolokhov’s and both of their eyes dropped to the floor in fear of something else, Hélène’s footsteps are heard in the hallway, and she enters the room. Heavenly Hélène, beautiful and enchanting and terrible. She has an ambivalent expression on her face, as though she is nervous, though Fedya cannot fathom exactly why.

Anatole does not see her enter, but Dolokhov does; he takes the step back, breaks the mirror, lets himself take the years of bad luck. Kuragin turns around to glance at her, and there is the split-second where her face does not hide an ounce of her regret and worry and _fear,_ for him, for herself, for Dolokhov.

Hélène, in a pinch, brings back the smile, ignores the softened quality around Anatole’s eyes and puts her hand on her hip. The fingernails dig into the cloth but– well, Anatole does not notice, and Fedya pretends not to. “Everything all right?” she asks, though it is empty and hollow and very characteristic, somehow, her glance not meeting Anatole or Dolokhov at all.

Anatole cannot help but clear his throat, replying, in a purr, “Of course, dear sister,” and even that sends a shiver down Fedya’s spine, puzzle pieces not quite fitting together, the seamlessness of the Kuragins no longer as exquisite and instinctual.

Hélène, with the tilt of her head, tells Fedya at once to leave the two of them alone, tells him to exit before he can do any more damage, tells him that this is a matter that he never can understand. There is a thread that connects Hélène and Anatole, thin and made of silk and catching the light just right if Fedya watches long enough. Her hands are pressed into his and he is already bowing his head to her, giving himself up in his entirety.

“I’ll be in the study,” Fedya says, though he doesn’t need to. He slips past the both of them and takes the stairs up two by two, shuts the door behind him and breathes and breathes and breathes.

He doesn’t know why he is out of breath, doesn’t know why he would need to be, but he presses his hands into the desk and waits for a moment or two.

Dolokhov pulls a slip of paper from his dresser, dots the pen into the inkwell, and begins to write a letter. His scribe was never as beautiful as Anatole’s, never properly taught or trained to write for more than simply business, and, in his barebones French which he has picked up from the graceful Kuragins and their high society, he begins to write:

 

_Dear Marya Dmitrievna,_

_I do not quite know what to say, but I will try._

 

* * *

 

 

Anatole returns hours later, his jacket folded over his arm, a softened quality about him. He and his sister must have gone out into town despite the hour, Fedya can tell by the windswept quality of his hair, but he supposes that the Moscow festivities can pour late into the evenings. The parties of the night may continue well into morning. Dolokhov scrubs his hand over his face and waits for Anatole to greet him.

“What are you working on?”

He isn’t working on much of anything. He looks up to find Anatole just before the desk, his fingers ghosting over various papers. “Nothing of importance,” he replies, and realizes that Anatole is still wearing Fedya’s shirt from earlier. “Where were you and your sister?”

“Wandering,” Anatole says, looking nowhere, “It’s a lovely night.”

Fedya hums, but doesn’t quite know how to reply. He supposes it must have been. “I’m sure,” he says, with a wryness etched over his features.

“Everything is settled,” he begins again, haltingly, taking another step around as Fedya further places objects into drawers. It’s not that he has anything to hide, it’s merely that Anatole doesn’t need to get entangled in it.

“I’m glad,” he says, and he doesn’t know why every word he utters sounds as though it is forced from his lips. He wishes, desperately, that he could tell Anatole of it all, but he is not quite foolish enough for that.

Anatole looks at him, as if he expects something. There is a nervous energy surrounding him, capturing him. The same nervous energy as just before the abduction, and at once Fedya’s stomach drops to his knees as he awaits the inevitable.

Anatole clears his throat and says, as if admitting defeat, “I’m leaving for Petersburg.”

Fedya ought to have questions to ask, accusations to make, but he cannot find the energy in him to do so. It is the early hours of the morning and there must be a troika waiting outside and Anatole is already packed. There is nothing to wait for, nothing stopping him. He must, Fedya realizes, or else he will never be gone.

“I’m sorry,” Prince Kuragin is saying, for no reason at all, and as Fedya rises to his feet and circles around, he takes his hand. He does not know what exists between them, or what he wants it to be, but he knows better than to fight against something that is already set in stone. Perhaps Anatole would, but the past week has aged them both more than they’re willing to admit.

Fedya traces the line of his knuckle and tries to smile. “It’s my fault as much as yours.”

It’s rather stupid, Fedya notices, that he is even here, caring for Anatole, comforting him as he leaves behind the world of Moscow that he will forget in a month’s time. He himself is just a passing figure to Anatole, he thinks, and there is no bitterness, no bite there; Anatole is who he is, and Fedya is who he is, and so is Hélène and Natalya and Marya Dmitrievna.

Fedya does not know what he is accepting the blame for, nor why Anatole is apologizing, but he supposes that, for once, ignorance is in his best interests.

“I,” begins the prince, not that there is another word that he needs to say, “I’m going to miss you.” He pauses, as if unsure of this, but he is as sure of it as he can be. “And Hélène, of course, but you…”

“It’s all right,” Fedya interjects. It is. Anatole closes his eyes and kisses him, too lightly, his lips hovering over Fedya as though he’s frightened of what the both of them might do.

Dolokhov lets him, and smiles, and presses just a bit firmer. It is in his nature to push everything just slightly further than it should be, and Anatole is no exception.

He will help him gather his suitcases, and his clothing, and he will lead him to the foyer where the air bites at the door, harsh and bitter. A Russian night, or a Russian morning, or Russia between the two. Anatole is quiet next to him, as if he has stunned himself into silence. Fedya smoothes the line of his coat, longs to keep his hands there but knows better than to hold Anatole back. Oh how _desperately_ Anatole wants to be held back.

A part of Fedya knows that Anatole would like Fedya to sacrifice everything, just as he did for Natalya, but romance is not always as beautiful as he expects, life is not fairytales, there is no hero in shining armor and both Anatole and Fedya are far from knights. There is no flag to wave, no cheer to shout, no happy ending to be granted. They are both too wicked for romance stories as it is, but perhaps Anatole would like to live in his fictions for as long as he can. Fedya cannot blame him.

“Goodbye, Anatole,” he says, the door is open, the troika is waiting, his packages are all outside and the snow is still light. The world is quiet, for once, it is too early and too late at once for life to be stirring. Simply Anatole, Dolokhov, and the troika waiting for him. It is too perfect, and it makes Dolokhov’s heart tighten.

Anatole nods. Beautiful, terrible Anatole manages to smile, just once, his teeth shining in the early-morning light, his eyes twinkling, picturesque. For the first time, there is no feeling in Fedya's chest that causes him to pause, no sensation that perhaps Anatole is tricking him, perhaps matters are not as they seem. Anatole is the plainest he has ever been, just as who he seems: a boy saying goodbye. 

As if in a painting, a frozen still, the snowflakes fall, and Fedya watches him go. He would not think of doing anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, merry christmas to everyone who celebrates it! this took months and i was only spurred on by alex. i don't know if i'm content with the ending, but maybe we aren't supposed to be content with endings. 
> 
> thank you to everyone who supported me while writing this. it's been a good four chapters. this is the first time i've ever written a multichapter fic, and the lovely comments have made me want to write more. i'm sorry again for the delay, but thank you thank you thank you. 
> 
> :)

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on tumblr @shotbyafool


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